


Keeping Spinning

by thesunshineunderground



Category: Spinning Out (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, I don't know about skating, Slow Burn, but i'm trying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23816992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunshineunderground/pseuds/thesunshineunderground
Summary: I binged this during quarantine and there were too many cliffhangers and then I found out the show had been *cancelled* so I couldn't help trying to resolve some of them
Relationships: Dasha Fedorova/Tatiana, Kat Baker/Justin Davis
Comments: 51
Kudos: 147





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> my gift and my curse is being hooked on writing quasi-sequels in small fandoms... I don't know if anyone even watched this show (since apparently that's why it was cancelled...damn you, Netflix!!) but I was obsessed with basically every single character so I could not help myself from writing some more. I am a sucker for slow, dreamy, introspective burns (this one with a heaping side helping of angst) and also I will NEVER BE OVER IT re: Dasha and Tatiana, so here is the first chapter of what will possibly be many..?
> 
> (p.s. currently rated M for language--they use v much swears in this show, so using it felt true to form--but if folks feel like that rates an E rating, please let me know, and I'm happy to change it)
> 
> (p.p.s. I can already feel that I have made everyone react to things with less drama than the show would have had them do but I am normally a low-to-zero conflict fic writer, so I am trying)

Chapter One

Kat held her sobbing sister in her arms and wondered how things had managed to get so unbelievably fucked in under twenty-four hours. 

Not that things weren’t fucked yesterday. And there were a few things--well, Justin, specifically--that were marginally less fucked. Kat took a deep breath against her shaking sister and tried to focus on how he’d looked when he’d kissed her--”you never let me fall”--before they’d started skating, been so in-sync…

No, no. That led her down the path of thoughts that made her itch to move, to rage, to bite herself or shatter things,  _ fuck,  _ to do  _ anything _ , but right now Serena needed her and she was trying to be a better sister. 

“I’m so sorry, Kat,” Serena whimpered snottily. “I just thought…” She trails off. 

Kat made some noises that she hoped were soothing. It had been like this for a while, and she’d run out of things to say, not that anything she had started with had been helpful, anyway. She squeezed Serena tighter as if it could communicate all the things she wasn’t sure how to say.  _ I know how you feel, I understand why you did it, I have done so much stupid shit because I just wanted to feel like someone loved me best. _ But how the fuck did you say those things? So she just let Serena cry and held on tight.

After a long while, Serena seemed to start to run out of tears, her sobs growing softer and softer before trailing off into soft snuffles and eventually stopping. Kat has just started to wonder if Serena has cried herself to sleep when Serena asks quietly, “Where’s Mom?”

Kat felt the calm she’s been trying so hard to hold onto drip desperately away, like through a crack in a bucket. “I don’t know.”

She hadn’t seen Carol since the rink, since she’d hustled Serena out after the showdown with Mitch. After Jenn had sided with that pervert. 

After that, things had gotten very hectic very quickly. She’d had to basically run to get to the rink in time for their long program. She could still see the naked relief in Justin’s expression, the more measured acceptance in Dasha’s. “I’m here, I’m here,” she had panted, feeling like she was grasping at threads. 

Justin had smiled his too-white, rich boy smile, squeezed her hand, and for a minute, things felt okay. In fact, things felt great for about two-and-a-quarter minutes. As they had started their long program, the swelling of  _ Romeo and Juliet _ propelling them, it was the kind of skating Kat lived for, the kind she couldn’t live without. Even more than that, it was the kind of skating that fueled her growing love of pairs. They were perfectly in sync, their energy feeding off one another’s, until it was huge, the skating effortful and effortless at the same time. She barely felt the terror of being lifted and thrown--it never fully went away, but as she skated with Justin, as he hoisted her into an overhead lift as he had done a thousand times before, that old fear of falling was buried behind layers of the sensation of flying. She was almost certain that Justin felt it, too; as he lowered her back to the ice, she thought she saw the flicker of a smile beneath the fierce concentration of his performance face. 

Then, somewhere just after the halfway point, they’d done a triple toe, and though they both landed, something was  _ off _ , the magic broken, and the rest of the program was done through raw athleticism, the kind that felt twice as tiring for the same result. They skated the rest of the program clean, but that was the best that could be said for it. When they finished and came back together on center ice, trying to look confident and pleased even while their chests were heaving, there was a tense edge around Justin’s eyes. 

“It was me,” he muttered through a gritted smile. They bowed, then spun to bow in the opposite direction. “It was my fucking edges.” She squeezed his hand before letting go. 

Dasha’s expression was inscrutable as they left the ice. “Good. Clean skate. Next time, Katerina, don’t be late.” As Kat started moving away from the rink, Dasha said something else to Justin that she couldn’t hear. Justin gave a sharp, frustrated shake of his head, then, a few seconds later, nodded.

The moment they left the ice, the sounds of Gabe and Leah being announced echoing fainter and fainter, everything she’d been able to block out during the skate came trickling back in: her mom, Serena, Jenn, even Mitch. 

On the way to the Kiss and Cry, Kat craned her neck, looking for them, not that she knew what she’d even say. Maybe they would give her some kind of sign that things would be okay. She wondered if any of them had seen her skate. The crowd was thick in this part of the rink, though, with dozens of people bustling purposefully about, so if they were there, she didn’t catch sight of them.

Dasha, resplendent in her massive fur, led them unerringly through other skaters, coaches, and the occasional stressed skating parent. They arrived swiftly, but a moment before they settled in front of the cameras, Justin grabbed her hand and tugged her back gently. “What’s going on, Kat?” he asked, low and urgent. “What made you late?” 

Kat darted a glance around. Nobody was filming them yet, but there were still far too many ears around for this conversation. 

She shook her head discreetly. Justin opened his mouth to argue, but she squeezed his hand quickly to stop him. “I’ll tell you later.” He paused, then nodded. 

One of the USFS people ushered them forward. She and Justin settled in on either side of Dasha and tried to look politely eager. Justin reached around behind their coach’s back to grasp Kat’s hand; Dasha held his other hand in both of hers. 

When their scores posted, Kat registered the sinking feeling in her stomach faster than the math did. They’d done well on the technical-- _ their program had been, after all _ , Kat thought bitterly, clean--but they’d been slammed on the artistic score. They hadn’t placed. It was over.

Kat breathed and surprise melted into a white hot jolt, the familiar feeling of rage, self-censure, and disappointment:  _ how could they? what more should I have done?  _ and just the vague, bottomless sense of some kind of loss. 

Frantically, Kat tries to keep her expression schooled. She knew all too well that the gossipy shrews who haunted the rink would never let her hear the end of whatever reaction she had. 

Justin tensed even more, and Dasha let out a slow, forceful breath. Then she clapped her hands together and stood, giving a brief nod at the cameras and then ushering Kat and Justin away with her, back towards the direction of the locker rooms. “Well,” she said. “It is like my promise: Nationals in  _ two  _ years, not one. This was not your year. Next year is your year.” 

Kat whirled away from Dasha’s guiding hand. The shout of anger has risen halfway up her throat when she manages to wrench it back. She is trying to be better. Hadn’t she  _ just said  _ she was trying to do better? She shoved the scream back in, hard. “Yeah,” she bit out. “Next year.” 

Justin put his arm around Dasha’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he echoed, if a little unconvincingly. “Next year.”

They settled into the stands to watch the rest of the competition--if you left immediately after a bad score, people would figure you were running scared, and then they’d have something on you--but they hadn’t been half-watching for long when Justin’s rang. “Why is Reid  _ calling…?”  _ He answered. “Reid?” He listened for a minute. “Wait, when? Okay, okay, shit, I’ll head over there. Does Mandy need anything? I can stop by the house on my way.” Reid answered. “Okay, sounds good, I’ll be there soon.”

Kat had watched all this intently. “Is everything okay?”

Justin made a vague gesture. “Yes and no. The doctors think they know what’s going on with the baby’s lungs, so they want to do a surgery to fix it, which is supposed to be safe but Mandy’s freaking out, and my dad needs to run home for a shower so he can sit with her all night, and the twins are the twins.” He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, as if saying it out loud had felt heavier than hearing it. “So everything should be fine, but I have to get over there.” He nodded his head toward the rink. “You should stay, if you want. I’ll call you later.” She nodded, and he kissed her quickly and left. 

Kat wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or upset that she and Justin weren’t going to be able to talk. 

She watches the ice without processing for a little while, keyed in more to her own thoughts--Justin, Serena, the season over, her mom-- with a kind of detached absorption than to the men’s singles below. Her phone buzzed, jolting her back to the present. 

A text from Serena. “ _ Are you done skating? Mom dropped me off and then just left. Can you come home?”  _

Kat had hurried back to her mom’s house to find Serena alone, hugging herself and trying not to cry. Some impulse had led Kat to wrap her arms around her sister. It was then that Serena had broken down. 

That had been hours ago, now. Serena hadn’t done much else but cry since, and there had been no word from Carol, so fuckall if Kat knew where their mother was when Serena asked. 

What Kat didn’t want to tell Serena was that Carol was probably out drinking herself blind, or just staying away to punish Kat, never mind that she had a distraught teenager at home--Kat swallowed hard against the phrase  _ statutory rape _ \--never mind that Serena was going to be without a coach because Carol (and yes, Kat had to recognize, because she too) had fucked up again, never mind that she was supposed to be a goddamned parent. Kat didn’t want to have to tell Serena any of this, because she wanted to not be such a disappointment for five fucking minutes of this fucking nightmare day. 

***

“Will you two stop acting like fucking children?” Justin hissed at his brothers, who had spent the last thirty seconds or so nudging each other with increasing force that was becoming increasingly noticeable. It wasn’t the first infantile bullshit squabble he’d had to break up this afternoon. 

“Boys,” his dad said, Justin’s voice drawing him out of his thoughts. “If you’re not going to act like civilized people, you can wait at home.” His voice lacked just a touch of its normal edge. The stress of the last few hours was wearing on him. 

Justin had rushed over when he’d gotten his brother’s call, several hours prior. He’d felt conflicted about leaving Kat at the rink, even though he’d known he had to. He wasn’t sure he  _ wanted _ to talk about everything that had happened in the last few weeks as much as he felt like he had to, if he had even half a chance of now blowing everything up with Kat. 

Reading her email had felt at once unreal and hyperreal, even despite the conversation with Marcus and Alana about their suspicions, both like everything was falling into its logical place and like he had been hit by a comet.  _ Bipolar _ . At first it had felt strangely distant; he knew more people who used prescription meds for fun than those who used them for their intended,  _ prescribed  _ purposes, and so the notion of mental illness felt at once distant and strangely proximate. He had never known anyone who had-- _ or, well _ , he thought,  _ anyone who  _ talked  _ about having _ \--a mental illness, or at least not a serious one. And yet--he’d read and reread Kat’s email, thought back to the little he had retained from high school psychology, and, eventually, when he’d run through what he knew, done a little bit of searching, doing his best to keep to more reputable sites. It had made more sense than he’d wanted it to, leaving him feeling stupider and stupider as he traced back to the mounting explosiveness of Kat’s recent energy. 

When he’d traced that line of thought back to its origin, he’d frozen. Of course it had been that night, before the competition, when she’d first said he’d loved him. When that had occurred to him, it had brought with it a bolt of nausea he hadn’t felt--hadn’t  _ allowed  _ himself to feel--in years. The feeling of being caught out, of being made vulnerable and rejected, found wanting. And when he had confronted Kat about it--he’d been half-convinced that she’d shake her wild hair at him, tell him,  _ no, of course I meant that, I love you, Justin,  _ more the fool him--it had been worse, because then both of them knew it, that he wasn’t enough. He’d tried to conjure up the old armor--act aloof, act superior and distanced, prepare to cut her before she could cut him--but this wasn’t some girl he’d hooked up with at the lodge, it was  _ Kat _ , and not only had she managed to worm her way fucking inside of him, turning him into the kind of fucking  _ idiot  _ who would take the fall for her--not only that, but she was his partner, and they were  _ good  _ together. 

All week, he had been positively sick with it, wondering how he could keep skating with her, wondering how he could  _ not  _ keep skating with her. And then she’d looked at him with her intense, mad eyes and talked to him about partnership, and promises, and  _ never letting her fall _ , and he’d felt something, one more piece, snap into place. Later, he’d get as close as he possibly could to putting it into words when he was talking to his dad.  _ He couldn’t blame her for being complicated, not if it was part of why he loved her in the first place _ . That last piece had something to do with the knowledge that even if loving Kat was messy, and even if she wasn’t telling him everything, at least, for now, she wasn’t lying to him anymore. And he’d read that goddamn email enough times for it to sink in that that was no small thing for Kat. 

But then she’d had to run off for--something, he still didn’t know what. And then they’d had to skate--cue the nausea again in the moments where he’d thought she was going to be late, was going to miss their skate, was going to prove him wrong about her sense of her honesty. And then he’d fucked up on his way into that triple toe, knocked himself off kilter and gotten in his own head. Their artistic score had tanked, their competitive season had ended, and all eyes had been on them. 

And then he’d had to leave. 

Reid hadn’t sounded frantic on the phone, but Reid had never been too great with reading the room. Justin had gone straight to the hospital nonetheless. In the last week of pacing, training, and frantically trying to pack up his room, he had thought about his relationship with his dad, feelings about which had also leaked through the cracks in his mental armor. That was salt in the wound with the whole thing with Kat, that it was costing him what little repair he’d made in things with his dad. 

But then Kat had stepped up, taken the blame for the whole thing. 

And so now Justin would, too. He would sit in this hospital waiting room with his brothers and his dad--who was alternately spending time in Mandy’s room and out in the waiting room with Justin in the twins, switching periodically with a restless energy--for as long as they needed him to. He tapped his phone awake. He’d been here for hours, but had only been minutes since he’d last checked his phone. He’d texted Kat a little while ago-- _ Hey, how’d the end of the competition go? Baby’s still in surgery, but they said it would take a while and not to worry yet _ \--but he hadn’t heard back and didn’t want to text her again, not yet, when they were barely off of rocky ground. When he almost reflexively checked his phone again, less than a minute later, he hauled himself to his feet to cross the room and sit next to his dad. 

“Hey, you need anything, Dad? A coffee or something?” The stress of the last few days was clearly weighing heavily on James; his face looked puffy and there were dark smudges under his eyes. Even in his usual non-workday outfit of a casual button down and wool slacks he somehow looked more bedraggled than even Justin, who hadn’t changed out of the sweatpants and long-sleeved t-shirt that he’d thrown on to travel to the rink that morning. 

James wiped a tired hand over his face. “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.” Justin nodded, and clapped his hand on his dad’s forearm. He started to stand, but James reached out and stopped him. “Can you ask Mandy if she wants anything? I don’t know if she’s allowed to have coffee while she’s--” he paused just a little, winced only slightly “uh, pumping, but she might want something.” James’ glance darted away, fixed his eyes on where the twins were still messing around, but now unobtrusively; they had always had something of their own world that nobody else had ever broken into. “I don’t want to go back in there until I’m a little more,” a cough, “pulled together.” 

“Sure thing.” His dad reached for his back pocket, but Justin waved him off. “I have my wallet.” 

James nodded, then went back to his distracted staring at the silent soap opera on the ancient waiting room television. 

Justin asked for the room number at the nurses’ station; he wasn’t sure he remembered it, and it was bad enough that he kept walking in on  _ Mandy  _ in various embarrassing stages of early motherhood, he wasn’t prepared to risk walking in on some other poor unsuspecting woman. He knocked at the door of 246 lightly before entering. 

Mandy had her hospital bed propped up and was paging through a magazine with the air of someone who is trying and failing to focus on something. She had the same stressed, harried look that James had had, but she wasn’t crying,  _ thank God.  _ The idea of trying to comfort his crying stepmother was almost too horrible for Justin to consider. In fact, she perked up when she saw Justin. 

“Hey darlin’,” she said in that upbeat drawl that used to make Justin hate her but that he now found sort of comforting--even more so with this whole baby fiasco. What used to make him think of the bratty popular girl from a teen movie now seemed like the iron spine of someone who would find a way to hold it together even when the shit hit the fan. He got why his dad needed that. “What are you doing back here with all us tired ladies and cryin’ babies?”

Justin was his father’s son, in ways that often snuck up on and surprised him, so he put on his best smile and tried to act like everything was fine. “I’m going to go buy Dad a coffee, and wanted to come see if you wanted anything. He wasn’t sure if you could have coffee with everything”--no way was he going to say the word  _ pumping  _ to Mandy’s face--”but maybe a tea, or a pastry, or a sandwich or something?” He glanced at the picked-over, wholly unappetizing tray of hospital food that Mandy had pushed off to the side. “Something intended for people with teeth?” He recognized what he was doing, the full-scale charm offensive that glossed over the bad and focused on the cheerful. It was cheap and false, but maybe false cheer was the best option in times like this. 

If Mandy saw through him--and she was married to his dad, so surely she did--she was nice about it. “Aren’t you sweet? I’m all set, but if you wanted to come sit for a minute, I wouldn’t say no.” She stretched out an arm and a smile, and Justin settled onto the industrial, uncomfortable chair next to her bed. He really liked Mandy a lot more ever since she had thrown that bell at him. “To be honest, your dad has been bringing me more food than I can handle.” She braced herself a little and leaned over to the nightstand. She pulled open the drawer to reveal granola bars, a few chocolates, and even a little baggie of carrots. “So help yourself if  _ you  _ want anything. I’ve been trying to pawn it off on the nurses before James notices, that sweet idiot.” She gave a half laugh that lacked heart. 

She was starting to look dangerously sad, so Justin leaned forward and snagged a granola bar. He was, actually, pretty hungry; he hadn’t eaten since the competition that morning. “That’s great, thanks.” When he ripped it open, it spewed crumbs all over his front. Mandy gave him a rueful smile that seemed a little more genuine. 

“Oh!” Mandy sat up straighter. “How’d y’all do this morning with the long program?” 

“Ugh.” He slumped down in the chair. “I blew it on a triple in the middle and it threw off the whole program. We were already in like sixth before I left, with a few pairs left.”

“You fell?”

“Nah. I just…” He rolled his eyes. “I just went into it wrong and it threw me off. And then I think I threw Kat off. And sometimes I feel like they dock you even more when your artistry starts out good and then goes to shit, like they see even more how it’s  _ possible  _ for you not to suck, but you do.” 

“Well,  _ suck _ seems maybe a little far. How’s Kat?”

“Surprisingly not pissed.”

Mandy gave him a sly look. “And you and Kat?”

He gave her a look but she just laughed and gave it back to him. He groaned again.  _ Well, if it cheers her up through all of this _ … “Better. I think? We made up--” and he had to roll his eyes, because he sounded like a fucking teenaged girl “--but she was acting weird all day, almost missed our ice time.” Mandy looked surprised; Justin shrugged. “She said she’d tell me later, and I think she meant it, but I haven’t heard from her.” 

Mandy pressed her lips together and seemed to think a moment before speaking. “Your dad told me about everything with the party, and the mania, and you trying to cover for her. You’d been doing well recently and I think he was worried that you’d get dragged back into trouble. I think also a little impressed that you were ready to take the fall,” she amended conspiratorially, “but mostly worried. But I think--well,” she stopped herself suddenly. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, compacting the granola bar wrapper in his fist. 

“Don’t you ‘of course’ me, Justin Davis. We both know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. With the twins, it was easier. They were younger when I met your dad--not to mention absolute goddamn hellions--so they needed more of a parent. But you were three-quarters grown by the time I came around, and inclined to be suspicious.” Justin nodded absently; he has taken too long to appreciate Mandy’s no-bullshit way. Mandy waved a hand. “Sorry, all the stress is making me melancholy. Anyway, I think it’s good that you’re letting somebody in, and even if Kat can be...challenging, I think she’s a sweet girl playing with a bad hand. Growing up with Carol can’t have been easy. And I think it’s good that she’s letting you in, too, and Lord knows the two of you can skate like hell. But don’t rush it. People get cautious when they get dealt shitty cards.”

Suddenly Mandy’s assessing gaze became unbearable and Justin itched to deflect, to make a joke, but it felt like he’d be missing the point if he did. He fiddled with the wrapper. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He shoved the wrapper in his pocket, then looked back up at Mandy. “Thanks.” 

Mandy looked like she was thinking about saying something more and Justin, not sure he could take it right this minute, had loaded his dad’s coffee order as an excuse, when a doctor appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. Davis?” she asked. 

“Can you go get your father, Justin?” Mandy asked, her voice tight, but Justin was already on his feet and halfway out the door. He gave Mandy a reassuring smile over the doctor’s shoulder before taking off down the hall at a jog. 

Even though Justin had been gone for a good ten minutes, James looked as though he hadn’t moved an inch. “Dad!” he called, trying not to sound urgent. There hadn’t been any news, the doctor had looked normal, not stressed but not happy either, but his dad looked like anything could knock him off course at this point. “The doctor!”

James was out of his seat in a flash, brushing past Justin with a hasty touch on his shoulder, disappearing down the hall towards Mandy’s room. Justin stayed frozen in place, unsure of what he should do. First Drew and then, after a nudge from his twin, Reid noticed him just standing there. “What?” Drew mouthed.

Justin shrugged and took a few steps towards them. “Dunno. The doctor came in and I came to get Dad.” 

“Is that bad?” Reid asked Drew. 

“I know literally exactly what you know, dipshit.” 

Reid flicked Drew on the side of the head. Drew flicked back. 

“Jesus Christ, you two are morons. Cut it the fuck out,” Justin said. Drew, at least, looked a little shamefaced. 

Justin dropped into the seat next to them, but had barely gotten settled before James appeared at the end of the hallway, the relief on his face immediately obvious. All three brothers stood. “The surgery went well. They think she’s going to be okay, that this surgery fixed it.” He laughed a little, the slightly hysterical laugh that accompanies the release of long-held tension. Justin felt himself smile automatically in response. This was only one of about a million things that had been weighing on him recently, but it was a big one, and fuck if it didn’t feel good to have that lifted. 

James was still talking. “She’s still pretty small, so she’ll have to stay in the hospital for another week, maybe ten days, but she’ll get to stay in the room with Mandy, and they said that she should be fine, just fine.” He grabbed Reid, who was standing closest to him, in a one-armed hug, and kissed the side of his head. 

“Okay, okay, Dad, geez,” said Reid, shoving James away. He was smiling, though. 

“Can we see her?” Drew asked. “The baby?”

“Not yet,” James said. “She’s still in post-op, which I guess is longer for infants? But we’ll be able to see her in another hour or so, and you can go see Mandy, if you want.”

The twins headed off down the hall, but James held Justin back. “Thanks for telling me to get my head out of my ass, earlier. I needed that.” 

Justin threw an arm around his dad’s shoulders, buoyed by relief and, shit, just genuine happiness. “Anytime. Now, let’s go see your girls.” He said it just to make James smile, and it worked. 

The mood in Mandy’s room had completely transformed in the last few minutes. The twins brought an aura of chaos wherever they went, and were putting it to good use; Mandy was half-laughing, half-crying, looking as happy as Justin had ever seen her, handing out snacks from her contraband drawer; James was chiding her without heart, insisting that those snacks had been for  _ her _ , not for this ungrateful pack of beasts. Justin leaned, arms crossed, against the door jamb.  _ These idiots _ . 

The nurse had come and gone once more--telling Mandy not to pump, since she would have the baby in the room soon enough that she would be able to try nursing, which made Mandy cry again, and giving Reid in particular a hard glare as she mentioned the ward’s  _ policy about noise _ \--when Justin’s phone rang. Kat. 

He brandished the phone at his dad, who nodded for him to go. 

“Kat,” he said when he’d cleared the waiting room. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t text you back sooner, I was with Serena. My mom’s AWOL. But how’s Mandy and the baby?”

“They’re okay.” He updated her quickly. “What’s going on with Serena and your mom? Is that what was happening this morning?” The cold hit him like a wall as he left the hospital. He headed past the cluster of smokers huddled miserably around the single receptacle and climbed into his car, turning the heat on. 

“That’s…” Kat sighed. “It’s complicated. Serena is going to be okay, but my mom is pissed, and Jenn’s boyfriend is a fucking snake.”

“Jenn? What?”

“That fucking doctor. Parker.” Kat rustled something in the background. 

Maybe it was just that his day had been incredibly long, but Justin had no fucking idea what they were talking about. “Wait, he’s dating Jenn? What does that have to do with your mom and Serena? What did he do?”

He watched one of the smokers grind out a cigarette against his shoe. Kat hesitated and what she was implying hit Justin a second before she said it. “Serena.”

“ _ What?  _ What the fuck, Kat! Did you tell Jenn? What did she say?” 

“That he didn’t do it.” Kat was speaking in hushed tones, he presumed to keep Serena from overhearing, but the razor-edge fury in her voice was unmistakable. “That Serena made it up--or I did. Because of the bipolar.” 

“Shit.  _ Shit _ .” This conversation made him feel like he was drunk, but he thought of Mandy’s cautioning patience and tried to hold it together. 

Kat was still talking. “So Serena is freaking out and who knows where the fuck my mom is. So it’s been a real fuckup of a day from start to finish, and nobody has eaten and there’s  _ no fucking food _ .” She punctuated each of these last three words with a bang of her fist. “Why is there never any fucking food in this house?”

“Jesus, Kat. What can I--is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, I just…” She sighed furiously and he could just picture her glare, which almost made him smile for a second despite this unbearably weird and frankly disturbing conversation. “I’m just going to stay here with Serena tonight and hope that my mom--shit.” Her voice grows distant for a second, and then close again. “Shit. Someone’s calling me at--shit, it’s like eleven. Listen, I have to take this in case it’s my mom, can I tell you the rest tomorrow?”

_ The rest?  _ he thought dazedly. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Kat--” He was about to say that he loved her, but decides against it. Maybe they weren’t back there, not yet. Maybe being patient cut both ways when it came to dealing with the tornado of chaos that seemed to follow Kat. 

Or maybe he was being a little bit cowardly, but it had been a  _ whole  _ fucking day. 

“Great, yeah, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Tell Mandy congrats.” Without anything further, she hung up, and Justin felt glad that he’d been reserved. 

Still, he took a few deep breaths before heading back into the hospital to be with his family. 

***

When the unknown local number popped up on Kat’s phone, she was talking to Justin and staring at the truly bullshit contents of her mom’s fridge. It must have been grocery day or some shit, because this was ridiculous, and Kat knew as well as anyone how intensely obsessive Carol was about her daughters’ diets. 

She hastily signed off with Justin and slammed the fridge closed. Secrets had been her default for so long that  _ not  _ keeping them made her feel shaky, like she’d had too much caffeine on an empty stomach. She pressed her empty hand flat against the counter and glared at it for one, two seconds, ordering it to stop shaking before she answered the phone. 

“Hello?”

“Hello,” said a carefully neutral female voice that she didn’t recognize. “I’m calling for Katerina Baker.”

“Yeah, this is Kat.”

“This is Officer Maddox from Sun Valley PD. I am calling because you are the contact person for Carol Baker. I am sorry to inform you that Ms. Baker was arrested this evening on charges of aggravated battery.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which everyone tries their best, but continue to all be chaos magnets

Chapter Two

Aggravated fucking battery. It had been thirty-six hours, give or take, since Kat had gotten the call, and she still couldn’t believe how unbelievably stupid her mom had been. Or maybe she couldn’t believe that she was naive enough to let herself be surprised because  _ of course  _ Carol had done something so unbelievably stupid.

Kat listened to Officer Maddox’s measured voice and fought the dual rage and sinking disappointment that accompanied the realization that she had allowed herself to be duped  _ again  _ by Carol’s apparent maternal care for Serena this morning. She had let her guard down, failed to anticipate the worst, and then the worst had happened. 

“Ms. Baker was detained this afternoon following a call to the department regarding an assault; when officers arrived at the scene, it was determined that Ms. Baker herself had made the call. This was confirmed by an account from the victim’s neighbor.”

“The victim?” Kat heard herself ask. Carol had done plenty of questionable shit before, God only knew, but she was pretty sure the first time someone had actually used the word “victim.” It felt nauseatingly heavy. 

“A Dr. Ethan Parker,” Maddox replied. 

Well, that made sense, at least. For a minute, Kat had the mad impulse to laugh. She wanted to hang up the phone, let Carol clean up her own mess for once, write the whole thing off, but--fuck,  _ fuck-- _ she couldn’t do that to Serena. 

Maddox continued while Kat breathed against the hard lump in her throat. “Because tomorrow is Sunday, Ms. Baker will be held for the remainder of the weekend; she will have a bail hearing on Monday morning.” Kat said nothing. How the fuck was she supposed to explain this to Serena? When Kat remained silent, Maddox started talking again, and Kat realized that the officer was being kind, making this call at all--hadn’t Carol gotten the one phone call that movies had told Kat everyone got when they were arrested? Who the fuck had she called? 

“This is Ms. Baker’s first arrest--”  _ That  _ was the most surprising part. “--and the fact that she called in the battery herself will possibly work in her favor with a judge. We will have more information at that point. Do you have any question, Ms. Baker?”

Kat realized after a beat that “Ms. Baker” now meant her. “Uh, no.” She actually had about a million questions, but she didn’t trust which one would come out. 

“All right, then.” Maddox softened a bit. “Well, let me give you my number in case you need to get in contact with me. I’ll be on duty during normal business hours tomorrow.” She rattled off a number. Kat didn’t write it down. 

When she had hung up the phone, Kat stared at it for a few second, gently laid it down on the kitchen counter, walked out the back door, and kicked the shit out of one of the posts of the back stoop until she was afraid that she would break the post, or worse, her foot. She breathed in ragged gasps of frigid air, the stab of it in her nose, throat, lungs almost as stabilizing as the kicking had been, and tried to stay quiet. The last fucking thing she needed right now was to wake up Serena, trigger another crying jag. 

She ran her hands violently through her hair. She hoped it had fucking  _ hurt _ , whatever her mom had done to Parker. She hoped it would fucking hurt for a long, long time. He deserved it. 

***

Despite the late night, and despite the fact that yesterday had been un-fucking-ending, Kat, trained from years of predawn practices, woke well before six with the disorienting dual sense both of having slept in and of being exhausted. Sunday after a major competition meant a day off practice, and for a minute or two this absence was accompanied by a paralyzing purposelessness. She considered just staying in bed--why the fuck not?--but she was buzzing with nervous energy and, besides, she had never realized how shitty this bed was until she’d spend some time sleeping at Dasha’s, competition with Yoka notwithstanding.

She dug up an old pair of sneakers out of her closet and went for a long run, instead.

For Kat, there were two kinds of runs: one that cleared her head, shut everything out except for the thudding of her own pulse, the sound of her own breathing; then there was the one that slipped too far into the realm of ease, where the physical exertion faded to the background, leaving a blank canvas for the desperate thoughts to creep in and stranding her without any distractions to beat them back. 

She ran hard, aggressively, right up to the edge of risking an injury, to guarantee that today’s run was the first kind. 

Twelve miles later, she felt halfway calmed by the deep, satisfied ache in her muscles. She had gone just short of too far, and the ache was just melting into misery as she turned the corner back towards Carol’s house. Apparently this was the kind of “healthy outlet” shit they were always banging on about in group. Maybe she would even be able to face Serena after this. 

These thoughts were bolstering right up until, as she slowed to a walk across Carol’s front lawn, a car came from the other direction and pulled into the driveway. Mitch climbed out, looking grim. 

“Kat,” he said tersely. “I’m just here to get some things. I tried calling your mum, but she wouldn’t answer her bloody phone.”

“She’s not home,” Kat said, heavy breaths curling into steam in front of her. 

Mitch ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Where is she?” When Kat didn’t react, didn’t answer, he broke off towards the front door. “Jesus Christ, fine, Carol gave me a key anyway--”

“Wait!” Kat lurched a few steps towards him. “Listen, shit, I’m sorry about yesterday, okay? I--I shouldn’t have accused you. But somebody  _ was-- _ Serena, I mean--” Mitch had paused, but she could see his patience wearing thin. “She got arrested. My mom.”

“ _ What?”  _

Mitch looked angry, frustrated, his stupid hair sticking in all kinds of directions, but he also looked like he actually  _ cared _ . Kat had to admit that even if she never liked the guy, he did care about her mom. Serena, too. It was uncomfortable to watch someone care that much. 

“She hit him, with like a bat or something, I think--the guy, the doctor, Parker.”

Mitch paled when Kat said his name. “Dr. Parker was--” He swallowed, didn’t seem to be able to make himself say it. “--with Serena.” 

Kat held his gaze for a moment and then gave a small nod. 

She didn’t like Mitch--she  _ really  _ didn’t like him, didn’t like how friendly he was with Serena, didn’t get why he’d walked into Carol’s drama, didn’t trust his playing stepfather with her sister--but in that moment she wanted someone,  _ a real goddamned adult,  _ to tell her what the  _ fuck  _ she was supposed to do. 

“Fuck.” Mitch said. Then again, “fuck.”

Kat nodded again. 

“Where are they now? Your mum and Serena?”

Kat jerked her head towards the house. “Serena’s inside. She was still asleep when I left. My mom…” She had to take a deep breath to keep her voice steady. “She’s at the police station, I guess? They called me last night, said they can’t figure out her bail until tomorrow.”

For a moment, Mitch seemed to just process this. Then, slowly, he started to nod, small at first, and then more confidently. “All right, listen,” he said. Kat was pretty sure he was trying to sound soothing. “Let’s get out of the cold. I’ll speak with Serena and then I’ll call the police about your mum. I can stay with her tonight, if you’d like, I’ve done it before.” 

Kat felt like she should say no, say that this was her family, her sister, her problem, but the lure of having it be  _ not  _ her problem was so tempting that she couldn’t let it slip by. One thing, though-- 

“Are you really not going to coach Serena anymore? Because you can’t go in there, not if you’re going to give up on her. It’s not fair to her, none of this is her fault.” 

“What? You’re quitting as my coach?” 

This was from Serena, who had come around the corner of the house with a large bag of trash in her hand, which she let drop as she spoke. 

“Shit, Serena--”

“Serena, don’t--” said Kat and Mitch at the same time, each cutting off when they registered that the other had spoken. 

“Wait, Kat, you knew?” Serena asked, her gaze darting between them. “What is going on? Where’s Mom?” She looked ready to cry again. 

“Serena,” Mitch said in a placating tone that set Kat’s teeth on edge. “I’m not quitting as your coach. I had a spat with your mother, said some things I didn’t mean, and Kat was there. I apologize. Can we go inside and talk about this?” He reached a conciliatory hand towards her. 

For a moment, Serena pinned him under a stare that was at once furious and bright with potential tears. Then she said, in a very small voice, “Yeah, okay.” 

Mitch clapped a hand on her shoulder, said “okay” in return, and then moved towards the front door. 

When Kat moved to follow him, Serena shook her head. “Just go home, Kat. Just go home.”

***

Dasha Fedorova closed her eyes and listened to the dialogue of an old Soviet film. She still found, after her surgery, that looking at a screen for too long caused her eyes to ache, so she had reverted to the old collection. They were the same movies from her childhood, the ones that played relentlessly on television, especially during the holidays. Ilya had patiently and persistently amassed DVDs of the films over the course of their marriage, working his contacts in the Russian expat community, and insisting on playing a selection as part of each New Year’s celebration. Thanks to this annual tradition, she did not need to  _ watch  _ these movies to watch them; they were familiar enough that she missed little by just listening. 

He had not been a bad husband, Ilya. Faithful, for the most part, and kindly unquestioning that the passion that held them together was for skating, rather than for each other. It had taken her a while to appreciate his willingness to let her chase her career, be the main breadwinner, but when other women her age began to get divorced--or, far worse, stay married to men they had despised, who made their daily lives miserable--she had recognized his contentedness, his absorption in his hobbies that kept him happy as he followed her professional rise as the gift that it was. 

If she had not loved Ilya, it had not been his fault. 

As she listened to the lion’s roar that indicated that their heroes had reached the treasure lair, she offered his memory a fond smile. She even missed him, sometimes. When his life was over, cut short by a fight with cancer that had been quick and brutal, Ilya had been her partner and her friend. 

It was nostalgia for this partnership that had had her turning to these movies more recently, she kept telling herself sternly, borne from watching Justin finally,  _ finally  _ find a partner he truly worked with in Katerina. It was  _ not _ a distraction. 

When she had purchased that computer, following her surgery, she had made a detailed mental list of all the things she could do with it. Pay bills, look at photos and videos of places she hadn’t seen in decades, keep up with skating news far more easily. But she hadn’t touched it, not once, since she had gotten Tatiana’s message. 

She pushed these thoughts away. There was no sense in dwelling on what might have been, and even less in mourning what had been the slightest sliver of hope, anyway. She clicked off the film halfway through and drew herself assertively to her feet. Lunch. She would make lunch. 

Katerina had not come home yet; Dasha had noticed, but was not concerned. She was a coach, not a mother, and Katerina’s comings and goings were her own business. She did hope that the girl was keeping her head on following yesterday’s loss. It had been a gamble, the bet she had made on Katerina. She was a beautiful skater--the best Dasha had seen in ages--but too ruled by her emotions. This would not have been tolerated in the kind of training Dasha had undergone, but she had been in the U.S. for a long time and maybe it had softened her to such things. Or maybe it was something in Katerina--her joy when she had finally landed a triple, the relief of knowing that she  _ could  _ overcome her terror, or maybe the fierce grit in her expression when she refused to quit, when she insisted on trying again and again--that made Dasha want to help her triumph, even when she was sure that Katerina was taking years off her life. 

Dasha had to admit, however, that Katerina had kept herself in check after the long program. It had been Justin who she had been concerned for; he still had not, she did not think, adjusted to the burden of truly caring, after so long spent hiding beneath the veneer of disdainful disinterest. She wondered if Katerina realized the power she held over him, if she could see beyond the veil of her own troubles to recognize that one partner could change the other in ways small and large. 

It was the language of experience, of working together and anticipating each other’s moves, each other’s moods that had led Dasha to her prediction of two years for Nationals, rather than the one Katerina had so clearly hoped for. There was no doubt that each was a beautiful skater individually; they each had the power, the artistry to accomplish great things. What they needed was the time to learn how to skate  _ together _ \--and for Katarina to learn how to skate with a partner at all--beyond the simple mechanics of pairs skating. She doubted either of them realized how much the frenzy before their skate, Justin fretting, Katerina obviously drawn in by something serious if it had kept her from the rink, had influenced the moment where they had fallen out of sync. In a year, they would know. They would be prepared, would take measures to avoid such things. And this romance between them--Dasha privately rolled her eyes; she had warned Justin, but had never really expected him to stay away, not after she had seen that spark in him--would either have settled a little or have fizzled out, though Dasha suspected the former. In a year, she smiled, she would have herself the kind of team that most coaches only dreamed of. 

So no, Dasha was not surprised by the loss. Disappointed? Perhaps the tiniest bit--glimmers of hope, she knew all too well, could do that to you. But she would weather this, as she had weathered many things before. Another year would come. 

She did not envy her skaters' mad, lovely passions of youth. And if her age brought the weight of its own troubles, she would take those any day. 

***

All that day, Carol sat in the small, simple holding cell at the Sun Valley Police Department and thought about two things. One, she was scared about what would happen next but, two, she couldn’t manage to be sorry that she had hit that fucking monster. Even though she was sure it would mean worse things for her, she couldn’t help but hope that she had broken something, left some kind of permanent mark. 

She knew--God, it killed her, but she  _ knew _ \--that she wasn’t always the best mother. And maybe it was terrible--probably it was terrible--but she wanted to do better with Serena than she had with Kat. It wasn’t favoritism, not necessarily, though she often saw so much of herself in Kat that it made it harder to forgive the sins she’d watched unfold so wretchedly in her own life. No, not favoritism--it was more that making the same mistakes again made her feel twice the failure. Bad enough that being a good mom, the kind you saw on television, who always had a snack prepared after school and knew how to soothe her children’s woes, hadn’t come naturally to her; if she messed up with Serena, it meant that she had failed to  _ learn  _ how to be a good mother, too. 

But no, she didn’t feel sorry, couldn’t muster it. Because she had hurt the man who hurt her child, and what was a mother if not a protector? 

She remembered, with a nauseating vividness, the day she had found out she was pregnant with Kat. Her skating career hadn’t been on the decline, but it was coming, close enough that she could see it. Rather, she had been living this kind of horrible plateau, forced to reconcile with the creeping realization that the years where she could train hard enough to scratch out some improvement, hard won and incremental though they would be, were over. 

So she had seduced Kat’s father--funny, wasn’t it, that she now could think of him no other way--or maybe “seduced” was the wrong word, she’d been young and beautiful and a professional athlete on top of it all, boys had basically been banging down her door--and some six weeks into their unimpressive affair, she’d found herself sitting on the floor of the bathroom of her shitty, shitty apartment, holding a piss-soaked plastic stick in her hand. 

When she saw the positive result, she had started laughing, the kind of laughter that creeps up on you, sneaks up your throat until it forces itself out, and once it’s out, there’s no stopping it. She had laughed and laughed until she felt sick, until she tipped over and had to press her cheek against the cold tile, until she had to fight for breath so fiercely that it frightened her a little. 

Because she was free. Trapped, of course, she was absolutely trapped. But she was free. 

After Kat was born, she wanted the skating back. She hadn’t necessarily wanted to lose it altogether, just had wanted to be able to blame something else, someone else, for her failure to rise, rather than her own lack of talent. But she had lost more than she had accounted for. 

Carol had always blamed Kat and been grateful to her for that, a ratio that had never managed to stabilize. 

Kat was still who she had had them call. Even when she hated her daughter, she knew that nobody understood her better. 

Serena was different. Serena was the daughter made out of the love that Carol didn’t know how to maintain, transferred from the father to the daughter the moment the little bundle was placed into her arms. Kat had already been five; they had begun to learn, the two of them, how to be the Baker girls. 

And frankly--this was another truth that turned a stab of guilt through Carol’s gut--she had always found Serena easier to love. She loved Kat, too, she did, but it required work; Serena, her little golden child, had always been more malleable. Serena had begun to push back as she’d eased into her teenage years, but never in the way that Kat, who had been a complete unholy terror, had. 

Carol’s memories of Kat’s teenage years were fragmented, splintered between the times where she had been on her medication and the times where she’d lapsed, punctuated by Kat’s own diagnosis at seventeen. That day, like the day she’d held the pregnancy test, was inked indelibly on her memory. For once, Carol had been the stable one; it was one of the longest calm stretches she had had for a while, with medication that was working, side effects that were manageable, a therapist she’d actually liked. But Kat had been growing increasingly erratic, alternatively depressed and manic in a pattern that Carol recognized but desperately wanted to write off as mere teenage moodiness. But Kat’s coach, with a timidness that bespoke years of experience with tightly-wound skating parents, had suggested that maybe it was a bit more than the normal hormonal surges, and perhaps a doctor could help. 

The doctor had sat them down in an office that had a clutter of toys in one corner--at that age, Kat had still been seeing a pediatrician--and suggested that, given the symptoms, and given the family history, that he recommended that a psychologist or a psychiatrist (though  _ both  _ would be better) assess Kat for potential bipolar disorder. 

When he had said it, Kat had jerked her head to look at Carol, and her gaze was so full of unfettered resentment, full of blame not only for a chaotic childhood but for this specific shitty genetic inheritance, that Carol was sure that her older daughter would never forgive her. 

Now, years later, Carol wasn’t sure she ever had. 

They had told Kat’s coach that it  _ had  _ been hormones after all, but just a slight imbalance, common but not strictly normal in teenage girls, and that a contraceptive pill would sort everything out quickly. 

But that first lie had snapped the thin thread of honesty that had extended between Carol and Kat, and they had never managed to repair it. 

So if there was only one daughter left who sometimes looked at her like the bond of family bound them, if there was still one daughter who needed her, relied on her, trusted her enough to crack open the door into her life… 

If there was still one daughter who Carol had the power to help, well, she would throw herself head first into hell for that daughter without a second thought. 


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

When Justin arrived at the rink on Monday morning, a few minutes behind where he needed to be to be down on the ice in...shit, three minutes--he was always a little more sluggish on mornings after a day off practice, and he felt it twice as acutely today, after a Sunday spent ferrying to and from the hospital where Mandy was getting prepared for her discharge--he thought there was an above-average level of gossipy whispering, but he ignored it and hurried for the men’s locker room. Doubtlessly several of the ever-curious skating parents had seen his disastrous performance on Saturday and were just waiting to fight over what was left of his corpse, the jackals. 

“...Baker,” he heard. “Can you believe it? I mean, I always thought she was a loose cannon…” 

His head snapped up, but he kept moving. Were they talking about  _ Kat?  _ She’d skated well on Saturday, hadn’t offered up any fodder. But then, he rationalized, conversations about Kat were only intermittently about her skating. 

Even though her email hadn’t mentioned it explicitly, Justin had known instantly that Kat’s bipolar wasn’t something he was meant to keep to himself. He knew--abstractly, distantly, like the way he knew that there was a garbage patch in the Pacific, as something that was distressing but not really relevant to his life--that mental illness and sports made an ugly combination, and God knows he knew that nobody ever kept their goddamned mouths shut. But he also knew, far more obvious to his eyes, at least, that Kat hated to let anyone see her cracks, and that if he started telling her private business to outsiders that she would make sure that he didn’t get to know any more of it. 

He admired that. Sometimes begrudgingly--god knew that woman could be  _ difficult _ \--but he admired it. She knew her limits, and forced everyone else to adhere to them with a fiery will. 

So when one of the moms who haunted the rink caught his eye, he offered up a lazy smile but didn’t falter his steps.  _ Nothing to see here, ladies _ . 

The smirk he got back wasn’t entirely reassuring, but he didn’t have the time to sweat it. 

He threw his skates on in record time, slamming his bag into his locker and ignoring the sniggers that came from Gabe’s direction. At least that reaction didn’t require any deeper investigation. Or any action. This wasn’t the first time Gabe had blown up at him, and it wouldn’t be the last. Their friendship--if it could be called that, but it was probably the best description for the forged-in-fire, no-better-choice relationships some skaters had with each other--had always been tinged with animosity. 

“You’re late,” Dasha said without looking at him. Kat was already out on the ice, spinning lazy, listless circles. 

“I’m like ninety seconds late,” he protested, slipping the covers off his blades. 

“Late is late,  _ radnoi _ .”

He figured that Russian terms of endearment meant he wasn’t in too much trouble and joined Kat on the ice. She gave him a tight, terse smile, which, in Kat-speak, meant she wasn’t mad at him either. 

There was a blessed relief to having nobody that he cared about be mad at him. He had spent so long pissing people off, his dad, mainly, because it was easier to control. The creeping idea that maybe this was better--harder, but better--was too much for this early in the morning, 

They moved through some warm-up laps. When they were down at one end, far from other skaters, he muttered, “Is everything okay? With, you know, your family?”

She cut a sharp look over her shoulder at him. “People know. Polly Cabot’s dad is a cop, probably how. Everybody was talking when I got here.”

_ That  _ was what it had been about. 

“Shit, Kat--”

She cut him off. “Serena made it pretty clear that it’s not my problem anymore. Let’s just skate.”

He liked to watch her skate when he could. It wasn’t that she lost her tension, her rage when she did, but it changed, became channeled and purposeful. It was like watching molten metal get poured; you knew it could still burn you, of course it could, but it was so beautiful that you were a little worried you might just reach out and do it anyway. 

Justin wondered what Dasha made of the energy that was practically vibrating off Kat this morning, but every time he stole a glance at their coach, her face was impassive. 

He wasn’t sure how to talk about it, but Justin was pretty sure that both Dasha and Kat felt the same way about skating that he did. When his mom had put him in his first figure skating class when he was five, he had bitched and moaned about it at first. Even at five years old, he knew that it was  _ for girls.  _ It wasn’t that he wanted to play hockey, or football, or any of the other boy sports, but he also didn’t want all of his friends to make fun of him. He was the only boy in his class. So he had whined and dragged his feet--for about a week. 

It had hooked him right from the start, it really had. And it turned out that he was  _ good _ . 

As it happened, at five years old, his classmates were still too self-absorbed to pay attention to what Justin did outside of school, nevermind to consider that it was girly. By middle school, they did. But by that point, his classmates were all starting to pay attention to girls, but were not yet brave enough to actually  _ talk  _ to the girls they knew, and skating meant Justin had never learned how to be afraid of girls. He was already skating pairs by that time, so touching a girl was just business as usual, not some sort of secret, feared rite of passage. That gave him a certain untouchability.

And yeah, he was also good-looking enough and rich enough and popular enough and just mean enough that guys figured they might get punched in the face if they made fun of him too much. Plus, he had a dead mom, which gave him a kind of unsettling mythology, as if having a dead mom could be contagious. 

If the tradeoff for not being mocked was never having too many close male friends, Justin didn’t pay too much attention to the loss. He threw himself into skating, instead. 

Even at his most cut off, most distanced, he never stopped loving skating itself. You had to, even if that love was sometimes poisonous and terrible, to keep at it the way elite skaters did. The hours were brutal. Injuries, when they happened, even more so. And it was relentless; every day of his teenage years, he had dragged himself out of bed before the sun was even up to go and practice. Sometimes, when he hated everyone and everything else--his mom, for dying; his dad, for falling in love again; Mandy, for daring to exist; the twins, for having each other; Dasha, for her pragmatism; himself, for still feeling like this  _ all the goddamned time-- _ skating was the only real thing he dragged himself out of bed for. 

If he didn’t have this, he didn’t know what he would have. And as he watched Kat breathlessly (but not manically, he was pretty sure; he reminded himself to keep an eye on potential signs) throw herself into another spin, he knew how she felt. This was something that made sense, even when nothing else did, even when it was thankless and miserable and left you aching and bleeding. 

They skated hard for a while, and when Dasha called for them to stop, his muscles had the aching, complacent burn of accomplishment. 

***

“Baker,” the male officer called, knocking on the door of the holding cell early Monday morning. “Somebody here to see you. I’d be quick, though, you’ve got your bail hearing in a little over an hour.”

Carol stretched, working the aches and kinks out of her back. The lady cop who had been on duty yesterday had been a little nicer, calling Carol “Ms. Baker” and explaining things, albeit with a kind of cool detachment that dissuaded any connection between cop and criminal. She’d brought in a foldable camp bed--”It’s what we have for when people are here for more than one night. It’s clean.”--and a folded blanket that wasn’t very nice, but wasn’t terrible, either. She’d given Carol an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants with no drawstring, which Carol had had to roll up strategically to keep them more or less around her waist. She advised her that the public defender--Carol could not afford her own lawyer--would be in on Monday, sometime before the hearing. 

Carol assumed that was her visitor now. Her hair was matted--she’d been able to shower, in what was clearly a locker room intended for the cops, while supervised by the lady officer, so she was clean, at least--and she had no makeup, but it would have to do. 

She arranged herself and her terrible t-shirt as primly as possible on the camp bed. 

But when the cop came back a few minutes later, it wasn’t her lawyer who accompanied him; it was Mitch. 

Carol jolted to her feet. She had been very resolutely not thinking about Mitch over the last day and a half, but here he was, in front of her. She opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what-- _ I’m sorry, please forgive me, it meant nothing _ ?--but Mitch shook his head and thrust out the plastic bag he held. 

“I brought clothes. They said on the phone you’d want clean ones for your hearing.” 

When she reached out to take it, their fingers touched. He snatched his hand back. 

_ Where is Kat?  _ she wanted to ask.  _ How is Serena?  _ She wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. A moment passed, awkward, then another. 

“This is for Serena,” Mitch burst out suddenly, when it seemed that he couldn’t take the tension anymore, either. “I’ve decided I’ll stay on as her coach. But that--that’s it.” 

“Okay,” Carol said quietly.

Mitch seemed a little surprised that she hadn’t argued, but he didn’t comment. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go, so you can change.” He turned to leave.

“Wait--” Carol called with a lurching step forward. He paused. “Can you stay for the hearing? I just--I don’t want to be by myself.” He didn’t answer immediately, and she rushed onward. “If you can’t, I understand, I just--”

“I can stay,” he said, not looking quite  _ at  _ her. “But that’s it. We’re not--I can’t-- Just for the hearing.”

It was this, of all the things in the last two days, that made Carol feel like she might cry. “Yeah,” she said, feeling the tears well up in her, like an overwhelming tide, an emotional deluge that could suck her under. She focused on her breathing, something they’d taught her in treatment as a ways to manage the physiological symptoms of heightened emotion. It was  _ not,  _ the doctor was fond of reminding her, a replacement for taking her medication,  _ not _ a replacement for therapy,  _ not _ a replacement for taking care of her health overall; it was an extra, the icing on the wellness cake (Carol couldn’t help but roll her eyes at this metaphor, which the doctor seemed unreasonably proud of), but right now, it helped. She couldn’t afford to panic, right now, and she couldn’t afford to panic about panicking. She clenched her hands into fists like it could ground her. 

If Mitch saw her struggle, he didn’t say anything. “I’m going to go. I’ll see you at the courthouse.”

After he left, it took her a moment to get her shaking hands under control so she could do up the buttons on her blouse. 

***

Jenn had had a spectacularly shitty weekend and so far it was shaping up to be a spectacularly shitty week. 

She had slept terribly, restless but exhausted, and when her mom had bustled in, shaking her awake and muttering in Mandarin about children who didn’t listen when they were called and the entitlement of this generation, Jenn had considered using the pain in her hip--which would be only slightly exaggerated after a night of tossing and turning--as an excuse to beg off her shift at the store with her dad. 

She didn’t, not because she thought her mom wouldn’t believe her, but because she would believe too much. Jenn had seen it in her parents’ faces, buried under affected nonchalance: Jenn’s fall had shaken them badly. She saw it in her mother’s face whenever she caught Jenn grimacing in discomfort, in her father’s solicitousness, which he quickly disavowed if she ever mentioned it. She had even overheard her brother, talking to their dad while she feigned sleep in the hospital: “That scream, Papa. She scared the shit out of me.”

It spoke volumes that her dad didn’t even scold him for swearing. 

But even more than that, working at the store was just something to do in a life that was suddenly very, very empty. And it was a fair shot better than staring at her ceiling all day, reliving Saturday’s events. 

She couldn’t stop seeing the look on Kat’s face when she had said she didn’t believe her, when she had thrown her secrets back in her face. Kat had been angry, yes, but Jenn  _ knew  _ Kat’s anger. And it wasn’t surprise. Rather, it was resignation, like she had just been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

_ That _ was what Jenn kept seeing. 

It hadn’t registered, at first. At first, what Jenn had felt was just the bald fury and goddamned  _ unfairness  _ of it all. She wasn’t even really that upset that Kat lied. Lying was what Kat did. Didn’t the fact that she had lied for years to Jenn--her supposed best friend--about her bipolar diagnosis? No, it was more that Kat was going to take  _ one more thing  _ from Jenn. 

Kat had gotten to keep  _ skating _ , the one thing Jenn would have given anything--shit, she  _ had  _ given everything--to keep. Kat had the dreamy boyfriend, who was so in love with her it was almost ridiculous, their constant drama and bullshit aside. 

Why couldn’t she let Jenn just have this? Just this one, stupid, little thing that meant that Jenn wasn’t staring down the barrel of a life with her career over, no qualifications to do anything other than work at the ski shop that her parents hadn’t expanded so they could fund her worthless, dead dreams? 

She just wanted  _ something  _ that let her look forward instead of back. 

And so she had felt just a little bit self-righteous, hobbling away from Kat’s accusations with Ethan. 

But then, on the car ride home, something started to feel not quite right. 

She wasn’t quite sure when it registered. At first, she had thought Ethan was being nice, just really understanding about the accusation.  _ Maybe _ , she thought,  _ they gave doctors some kind of training to deal with this kind of thing, since they’re alone with patients so much _ . But then it had gone on a little too long. 

“Honestly, I feel sorry for them,” Ethan had said. “Those Baker girls, they’re both so sweet, but clearly misguided. And there have been some injuries that poor Serena has clearly exaggerated. Must be for the attention.”

That--that hadn’t hit right. For one, nobody had ever called Kat Baker ‘sweet,’ not if they had talked to her for more than ten seconds. And Serena certainly thrived on attention--who wouldn’t, with Kat and Carol as family? Their nonsense always blurred out everyone else’s--but exaggerate injuries? Serena was a total bitch, and Jenn couldn’t count the times she had longed to smack her in her bratty face, but she was also a tough-as-nails skater who bled through her skates with the rest of them. Exaggerating injuries weren’t her style. 

“Yeah,” Jenn had nevertheless echoed at the time. “You know teenage girls.”

“Right?” Ethan had asked. And if his laugh was a little insouciant, Jenn tried not to notice. 

He had dropped her off at home, still cheery, and then been weirdly quiet all weekend, even cancelling the date they had had for Sunday brunch with the vague excuse that “something came up.” 

“Oh no,” she had texted back, “what happened???” No response. And so, as the silence stretched, Jenn had visited and revisited that car ride in her memory, pressing at the sense of wrongness like a loose tooth, making it looser and looser the more she prodded at it. As Sunday afternoon wore on, her fingers had twitched more and more frequently towards her phone, itching to call Kat, to ask for more information, to just say her thoughts out loud. 

She hadn’t. 

Now, by Monday morning, the memory had the distressing fullness of a well-worn edge, and Jenn was feeling faintly nauseous against the question that had been creeping up her all weekend: what if it was true? 

As she swung her legs over the side of the bed--one smoothly, one clumsily encumbered by a full brace--her phone vibrated once. 

She lunged to snatch it up. But it was just Gabe. 

**Gabe:** omggggggggg jenn did you hear? carol hit dr p with a BASEBALL BAT like in the face!! 

Jenn barely made it to the bathroom before she threw up. 


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

She had gotten lucky; as a first offender, Carol could get out with a bail she could afford. Barely, but she could afford it. It was the other parts that made her feel nauseous; the judge, a bored-looking, sour man, had listed the various consequences if she was found guilty at trial, but Carol was pretty sure she had blacked out when he started talking about jail time. 

There had been witnesses. She was going to end up  _ in prison _ . 

Of all the stupid, impulsive, reckless things she had done in her life, this had to be the worst. God, what was going to happen to Serena? It wasn’t like Kat could take care of her. Why could she not think a single goddamned thing through? Even when she was supposedly doing well, taking her meds, she was such an idiot. And a coward--too much of a coward to even talk to her daughters. 

This was how she had found herself drinking before noon. She had started with a Bloody Mary, working with the idea that it was a breakfast drink, then switched to red beer because it kind of looked like it could be a Bloody Mary and because, well shit, she liked it. That had been a few drinks ago. But now the lunch crowd was starting to trickle in and she was considering switching to liquor she couldn’t afford, because presumably she would be fired as soon as Mandy heard what had happened. 

She downed the rest of her drink. Because what else was she supposed to do? Might as well get her drinking in now, because it’s not like it was going to be available when she was  _ in fucking prison _ . 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Oh god, what the fuck was Kat doing here?

“Hi, Kat,” she said, trying to sound as sober as possible. “What are you doing here?” She very pointedly did not look at the empty glasses in front of her. What was with the service in this place, anyway? Why hadn’t that scared waiter kid cleared her glasses? 

Kat shook her head. “Are you kidding me? What am  _ I  _ doing here? I’m trying to get my job back now that Marcus is in Argentina and our competition season is over. But I think the better question is what are  _ you  _ doing here, since as of this morning, you were in  _ fucking jail _ .” This last part she said on a dangerous hiss, but Carol still glanced around nervously to see who might have heard. Then Kat’s words broke through the haze of booze.

“What do you mean your competition season is over? You were in first place after the short program.”

Kat’s face was a mask of fury. “Jesus Christ, Mom, the long went bad. Still not the fucking point. What happened? Did you even call Serena?”

Carol couldn’t deal with that, so she focused on the one thing she had always been good at dealing with: skating. “God, Kat, how many times do I have to tell you that you can’t get cocky after one good skate? Do you really think Justin is going to keep you around if you start choking on competitions?”

She saw the hurt flicker across Kat’s face before anger covered it up. Carol hated the part of herself that felt a sick stab of pleasure at having hit her mark, at having struck back. Kat opened her mouth, then seemed to change her mind. She shook her head. “I’m done, Mom. I’m just done.” She turned to go, then turned back. “Next time you get arrested, call somebody else.”

And then she left.

Carol flagged down the pimply waiter and ordered a double whiskey.

***

Dasha watched the juniors practice with indifference. It was common for coaches to keep an eye on up-and-coming skaters even while training an elite pair--the timeline of a coaching career was much longer than that of a skating career, and the best of the best were snapped up quickly--but she was having a hard time mustering up any enthusiasm this time around. Maybe it was because she had been with Justin for so long; she had never had a student who had felt so much like family. Maybe it was because she knew she would never coach another pair like Justin and Katerina. Or maybe she was just getting too old. Taking on a young student could mean signing up for another ten years, and at her age that felt like more of a burden than an opportunity. 

And yet she still found herself observing with her practiced eye, because it is what she had always done when her senior skaters finished their competition season. She might not be prepared to take on another student, but she wasn’t prepared to let the possibility go, not quite yet. 

She was, nevertheless, done for today. She gathered her coat around herself and left the side of the rink. 

As Dasha crossed the lobby, she heard someone call her name. “ _ Dashenka! _ ”

She swore that her heart stopped. Impossible.

But no, she was real, standing there right in the lobby of the ice rink, smiling cautiously and looking just as beautiful as she always had. 

“Tatiana,” Dasha said, hardly able to believe it. “What are you doing here?”

Dasha had missed Tatiana for forty years; she had run over and over the idea of seeing her again, what it would feel like, how she would look, what they would say. But what she hadn’t expected was the instant feeling of relief, the knowledge that, no matter what happened now, at least now that horrible moment outside the Moscow restaurant wouldn’t be the last time they would ever see each other. 

She could put that regret behind her and open space to hope for more. 

Tatiana’s smile was bashful. “You didn’t answer my messages and I… I wanted to see you.” She laughed, nervously fingered the edges of her hair. “You must think me so strange, to just appear like this.”

“No!” Dasha cleared her throat and tried again. “No, I am happy you came here. How long are you here?” She was as nervous as a schoolgirl. 

“A week. I am staying at the inn near here.”

“Yes, good.” 

A beat passed, and it suddenly struck Dasha that they were standing in the middle of the entryway, being skirted by little girls scurrying for their ice time in tiny puffy coats. It was hardly the most ideal place to have a conversation, and yet Dasha was afraid of breaking the fragility of this moment. 

But Tatiana had always been the braver of them, hadn’t she? “Dashenka,” she said, and it had been just so long since anyone had used that nickname. “Would you like to get dinner with me tonight?”

“Yes, very much.” 

“Good, I will meet you at eight o’clock.” She let her hand brush against Dasha’s arm as she passed, and Dasha was sure she could feel the warmth of Tatiana’s touch even through the thick sleeve of her fur. 

***

At eleven days old and at a whopping six and a half pounds (“There’s a silver lining to this one being in such a hurry to get out,” Mandy had said as she cradled her tiny, sleeping daughter. “Y’all Davises are giants. I was a little bit worried, I have to say.”), Baby Girl Davis finally got a name and a homecoming. 

“We named her Mira,” James said, looking down with evident pride at mom and baby. “After Mandy’s grandmother.” 

“Sweet,” Reid said. “I don’t have the weirdest name anymore.” Drew kicked him. 

But now the baby was happily installed at home, all Mandy and his dad wanted to do was take a nap while the baby was sleeping, the twins were off somewhere probably destroying property, and Justin was at odds. 

Normally, he spent the off season drinking and hooking up with as many girls as came through the lodge, which was off the table for obvious reasons. He wasn’t sure how to fill his time. 

“Should I get a job?” he mused out loud. 

James looked up at him, bags apparent under his eyes. “Son, I love you, and normally would be happy to hear that you’re thinking about getting a job, but right now I am so tired that the floor is moving. Go call your girl or that mean skating boy and get the fuck out of my house.”

Kat was working down at the bar so he had texted Gabe: “I know you hate me but wanna drink? I’m buying.” 

Gabe had texted back “fuck you, asshole” and then “yeah, sure. lodge bar?” so Justin assumed that they were friends again. 

The bar was busy, but not slammed, and Kat leaned up and over the bar to kiss him on the cheek when he came in. “Aww, that’s cute,” simpered a tipsy middle-aged woman. 

“That is literally her first glass of wine,” Kat muttered with an eye roll. 

She slid him a vodka soda and explained how, with Marcus gone for training, they were understaffed and Kat had never been officially taken off the books, so when she had gone in to ask for her job back a few days ago, Alanna had begrudgingly agreed. “Alanna said that she wanted me to know that I was ‘just the easiest person to hire,’” Kat said, a bottle of gin in one hand as she made air quotes with the other, “and that I was still on ‘thin ice,’ but I need a job, you know?”

Not for the first time, Justin wondered what Kat’s life would look like if she could get rid of just one of the messes that her family always piled at her door. Would she even be the same Kat? 

She was not a natural-born bartender, lacking the easy charm that Justin knew that, for Marcus, netted great tips, but she was efficient, dispensing drinks primarily to the waitstaff, who knew not to take her broody demeanor personally, and the customers at the bar, who didn’t, and seemed alternately charmed and alarmed by it. 

Gabe arrived about a half an hour after Justin did, fully dressed for a night out even though it was a weeknight, and the relatively sedate bar at the Pinecrest Lodge was a far cry from a nightclub. Gabe’s glittery eyeliner earned him a few sideways glances, which always surprised Justin in the abstract way of something he knew to be true, even common in semi-rural Idaho, but had never really been part of his life. 

He knew Gabe would roll his eyes and call him a dumb straight white boy, but a lifetime spent skating meant Justin had never been surprised by makeup on men--he wore it himself, for competitions; if you didn’t, your face was just a white blob to the judges, and  _ emoting  _ was part of the whole performance--and once in middle school he had puched an asshole in the face when he had started giving Gabe shit over it. It hadn’t been entirely for Gabe--Justin had wanted to punch Brett Charles for  _ years  _ and his bullying Gabe and just given him the excuse--and he had  _ told  _ Gabe that, but it had cemented the kind of friendship that meant they liked each other even when they hated each other. 

Justin was a dick, but he wasn’t a  _ homophobic  _ dick. He had that, at least. 

Gabe gave the finger to the disapproving table of bros and hopped up on the bar stool next to Justin. “God knows why I even bother looking good for you heathens. ‘Sup, Kat? I’ll have a double shot of tequila--not well, on this idiot’s tab.” He winked salaciously at Justin, who had to fight back a smile. Fucking Gabe. 

Kat poured the drink and Gabe threw it back with a satisfied grimace. Kat arched an eyebrow, and slid a slice of lime to him on a saucer, then went to serve another customer. 

“I take it I’m forgiven, then?” Justin asked dryly over a sip of his drink. He wanted a refill, and wondered if Kat would be pissed if he just reached over the bar and snagged it for himself. 

“Ha! You were forgiven the minute you blew your long  _ so bad _ . Honestly, I’m surprised you’re still standing; Leah would have castrated me. Baker’s apparently cooler than I gave her credit for.”

Justin aimed a halfhearted punch at Gabe’s shoulder. “You and me both. But let’s keep talk of my failures--” he felt a twinge as he said it, but managed to keep it out of his voice “--to a minimum. I’m not sure Kat has one hundred percent decided not to hate me, yet.”

“Copy that,” Gabe said as Kat headed back their way. 

They shot the shit through another round of drinks, Kat flitting in and out as customers needed her, while Gabe regaled them with his most recent dating horror story. “So I get to the coffee shop, and the guy shows up with some woman, and I’m like ‘oh, who is that?’ like maybe it’s a coincidence or something, like they just ran into each other? But then he goes, ‘oh, sorry, that’s my mom,’ and I just sort of stare at him blankly because, what? So then he says, ‘she gave me a ride and didn’t want to wait outside’ and at this point I am terrified to ask why and I’m pretty sure my face totally says that, but maybe he is trying to still salvage this so he says, ‘it’s really cool that you have your own car in high school,’ because  _ this guy is totally in high school _ .”

Justin bursts out laughing and Kat wordlessly steals a swig of his drink. 

Gabe’s hair has lost some of its definition as he’s been drinking, and now he flicks some out of his eyes with a self-deprecating flourish. “And I don’t want to really think what this says about me, but my first thought was not ‘am I going to jail?’ but totally ‘do I look like I’m in high school?’” He threw back another shot, then shuddered. “God, I need to drink-- legally drink-- myself blind to forget it.”

He pushed his shot glass away sloppily, well and drunk by this point. “Speaking of romantic disasters, have either of you talked to Jenn this week?” Kat stiffened, and Justin tried not to look at her too obviously. “She’s, like, totally spiraling. She broke up with that dude, even after…” Gabe’s brain caught up with his mouth. “Aw, shit.”

It was probably only his experience with Leah that let Gabe survive Kat’s withering glare, or maybe he was just drunk enough that he didn’t notice, because he forged ahead. “Like, seriously, Kat did your mom boff that--”

“ _ Okay _ ,” Justin interjected, clapping Gabe on the shoulder to grab his attention, because Kat would definitely get fired if she punched Gabe, and the look on her face spelled violence. “Maybe let’s call it a night here, Gabriel.”

Gabe blinked at Justin, then closed one eye to focus better. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Leah will rip me a new one if I’m hungover at practice. Davis, thanks for the drinks. Kat, you’re a great bartender, sorry for making it weird.” He squinted at his phone. “Ah, sweet, there’s an Uber pool nearby. Gotta dash.” He gave Justin a kiss on the cheek that was a little wetter than Justin may have liked, then left, staggering just a touch. 

“You okay?” Justin asked quietly as Kat wiped down Gabe’s spot at the bar. 

“I have to close out my orders,” she said, not meeting his eye. “We’ll talk later.”

He finished his drink leisurely, watching her work. She always moved like this, with the same sort of purposeful grace she brought to skating. He hadn’t seen enough of her, this past week--yeah, there were practices, sure, but with competition season over, they were shorter, and he had gotten accustomed to having her time--and he liked having this little bit of time, even if he couldn’t have her full attention. She caught him looking and rolled her eyes and scowled, but he spotted the hint of a smile that crept back in before she turned away. 

While Kat ushered out the stragglers, Justin hiked over the bar and closed out his check, including a sizable tip. He wasn’t sure how to balance the fact that she was his girlfriend but also serving his drinks and needed money in ways he had never had to worry about, so he was doing it when she wasn’t looking, like a coward. 

It was one thing when flashing around cash was going to seduce some girl he'd never see after he winked over his shoulder on his way out to an early-morning practice. It was quite another thing watching Kat break herself against pressures that never let up and knowing that he would never really understand, and that no matter how much he loved her, he couldn’t fix it. 

So when she turned back around, he pasted on his best charm offensive smile, and felt it grow a little more authentic when Kat gave him an affectionate eye roll. “Robbing the joint, Davis?” She nodded at his spot behind the bar. 

“Nah, I just got a thing for the bartender, I’m trying to figure her out.” He launched himself easily over the bar, even though the hatch was only a few feet to the side. 

“Show off,” Kat groused. He threw an arm around her shoulders. 

“Are you going back home, or..?” He let the question trail off. Between Kat’s manic episode and her recovery, their fight, and their families, it had been too long since they had spent a night together. He wanted her to stay with a desperate edge that surprised him.

“I could, but…” Kat slid out from under his arm and faced him, traced a finger along the weave of his sweater. “It’s really late and we have practice  _ so  _ early. That commute is a killer.” 

Dasha’s house was nine minutes away. On foot. He looked slyly down at her. 

“Sleep is very important,” he agreed. 

“Especially for elite athletes such as ourselves. If only I knew someone who lived nearby.” The way her tongue darted out to touch her lower lip caused him physical pain. 

He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the elevator. 

As the doors slid shut around them, Kat threw her arms around his neck. “This is not a long elevator ride,” he murmured against her mouth. 

“You’re resourceful.” 

Ultimately, though, he was right; they arrived at his floor all too soon, and he had to fumble for his keys. When they finally got inside the door, he tossed the keys on his side table and Kat laughed when they skittered across the table and fell on the floor. He was for sure not going to be able to find those tomorrow, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. He turned back to Kat. “I know it’s late…”

She shook her head, a wisp of a curl curving against her cheek. “I’m not tired.” 

Well, thank fuck for small miracles. 

Slowly, watching her, he took her coat out of her hand, and tossed it aside. Then he slipped the knot out of her tie, and began undoing the buttons of her shirt. Her breath hitched. 

If he moved slowly and methodically, Kat was increasingly frenetic, reaching for the hem of his shirt, the edges of his hair, the back of his neck. But from where they stood, with her pressed against the door, and with his height, his slowness limited her speed. He smiled smugly at her and pulled the tie out of her hair. “Sorry,” he laughed when it snagged. She jerked her head to the side, tearing through the snarl. 

Justin used the grip on the back of her neck to fluff out her hair and press their mouths together. She melted and opened her lips and he stepped in just a little, just so that she was held a little more firmly between him and the door. 

They were still wearing all their clothes and still he could feel the warmth spreading through his hands, his face, his hips, all the places that he and Kat were touching. This girl would be the end of him. 

Kat shoved against his shoulders, not hard enough that it would have normally moved him, but she had caught him off guard; he stumbled back a few steps, and the moment he had caught his balance, she jumped into his arms. His body caught her out of pure instinct, out of practice; as he had promised, he would  _ never  _ let her fall, and he knew how to do it even when he was completely distracted and all the blood was increasingly rapidly moving away from his head. 

She laughed, the carefree laugh of a wild thing, as he moved them towards the bed. 

Justin hadn’t traditionally been the guy who had slowed things down, but there was this perverse urge with Kat that made him want to temper her urgency, to extend the slow pleasure that came out of caring for her. It was like being inside during a terrible storm; there was terror nearby, but you were certain in the knowledge that it couldn’t get to you, secure enough to just enjoy the ambiance. 

But Kat’s energy got the best of him, it always did, and he found himself increasingly matching her pace, sinking his weight on top of her as she tugged on his hair, running his fingers across the strong lines of muscle in her abdomen, leaning into the warmth of her core, burning hotter in response. 

“Too many clothes,” Kat gasped into his mouth. She started fumbling with the buttons on her shirt. He pulled his sweater over his head and tossed it aside, before turning to unbutton Kat’s jeans. If there was a smooth way to take off a woman’s tight jeans, he hadn’t encountered it yet, so he favored speed over elegance. Kat reached back for him with greedy hands and pulled him on top of her. He followed happily, kicking off his own pants hastily. 

“I missed you,” he muttered into her hair. Kat made a soft, desperate sound that shot straight through him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him in tight, even though there wasn’t any space between them to close. They yanked the rest of their clothes out of the way, made clumsy by desperation. 

When they came together, Justin could hardly breathe. Kat had this power over him that was sometimes almost scary--was that what love was? Giving someone access to your softest spots and hoping they didn’t exploit that?--but at times like this, it felt so good that he couldn’t manage to feel afraid. 

“Fuck,” Kat moaned. “I love you, Justin.” 

He hoarded her words. He was selfish in wanting her, greedy for her love, desperate to hear it enough that his doubts could finally disappear. 

“God, Kat. Kat, God.” He was incoherent, couldn’t string words together, so he tried to show her. Maybe it was even fitting, somehow. They had always communicated best when they moved together. 

After, when Kat had rolled next to him, letting him curl an arm around her waist and draw her close, he closed his eyes and felt the slow, rhythmic movement of her breath, trying to memorize this moment, locking it up safe to keep. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> russian nicknames often feel confusing to english speakers so just in case: Tanya is a nickname for Tatiana; Mischa is a nickname for Mikhail, Anya is a nickname for Anna (even though it is the same number of letters)

Chapter Five

Dasha was running late. She hadn’t overslept--she hadn’t overslept in over twenty years--but she kept catching herself getting distracted, brushing her teeth for twice as long as necessary, absently rolling her morning medications around in her hand instead of just knocking them back, over-boiling the kasha. 

Last night had been surreal, like something out of a dream. 

She had tried, really tried, to go about her afternoon as normal, she had. But the promise of really talking to Tatiana, after all these years, the knowledge that she was so close, that they would be together in only a few hours--it kept driving her to distraction. Absent smiles would spread across her face without her permission. She found herself fretting over what to wear. She might have been absently embarrassed about this--she was a woman full grown, after all--but excitement eclipsed almost everything else. 

Dasha wasn’t even sure she had been this nervous when she had fallen in love with Tatiana that first time. Back then, she had been in it before she had even realized, before she had had the chance to get nervous. Growing up where she did, and when she did, meant that a romantic relationship between women wasn’t something she had ever considered being possible until it happened. They had been friends, one of the few friendships Dasha had had, outside of skating. Surely they were all this intense, she had rationalized, once you got away from the fierce competitiveness and the hectic training hours. But then they had kissed--and even after forty years of revisiting that moment, she wasn’t sure who had initiated it--and she had realized how wrong she had been. 

It wasn’t just friendship. It was love. 

Friendship, too, certainly. But also a deep, intense, romantic love. 

And that was when she got scared. Scared for her skating career, for her reputation, for the path that she was forging that felt so uncharted. 

In the years after, and especially in the years after Ilya had passed, she had looked at other women. Yes, she was certain; her attraction to Tatiana had not been isolated, she was absolutely interested in women, but she had  _ loved  _ her Tanya. Starting over had felt so difficult that surely it was impossible. 

But now she had the chance to start over without starting over. Unless--was that what Tatiana wanted? She pushed the thought out of her mind. What would happen, would happen. 

And so she had resolutely parked herself on her couch and pretended to read until it was time--properly time, not furiously early time--to get ready for her dinner. 

If she had put on slightly more makeup than was usual, she felt that she couldn’t be blamed. 

She had arrived at dinner just a few minutes before eight--not at the restaurant that Justin’s father owned and where Kat worked, thank goodness. The last thing she needed was to be gawked at by her students. Tatiana was already at the table. She was wearing a simple pair of black slacks and a crisp light blue shirt, and for a moment Dasha was frankly astonished by how beautiful she’d looked. 

This was what love did, perhaps. 

“Dashenka,” Tatiana said warmly, rising to greet her. “Thank you for coming.” 

“Of course,” Dasha said. “Of course, I am so happy to see you.” 

Out of habit, perhaps, they spoke in English. It felt stilted and awkward, but Dasha supposed that this whole situation was stilted and awkward. 

They sat, and Tatiana commented on the glass of wine that sat before them. Dasha perused the menu like it was endlessly fascinating. They ordered. 

And somewhere in the middle, they slipped into Russian and slipped out of discomfort. 

From there, their conversation flowed. They talked about their lives, about losing Ilya, Tanya’s divorce. They commiserated over the hassles that came with living in a country that lacked the cultural touchstones they’d grown up with. Somewhere during that topic, they had exchanged an eye roll over the idea that, of course, it was  _ much  _ easier to have this dinner, so be so clearly on a date with another woman, in this age, and this place, but both seemed to understand that they weren’t quite ready to talk about that out loud, not yet. 

Instead, Tatiana had shown Dasha pictures of her children. 

“I had two,” she said, pulling up pictures on her phone. “There’s Mikhail, Mischa--I had him back in Russia. Then my Yulia was born shortly after she moved here.” She showed Dasha a picture of a stern-faced young man and then a smiling woman, holding a baby. The arm of a tall, skinny man with glasses was around them. “This is their baby, Anna, and her husband, Dan. They live near me, so I see them frequently. Mischa lives all the way in Boston.” She made an expression that Dasha interpreted as good-spirited displeasure. “He has been engaged for years to a woman, but they never set a date to be married. I do not understand why they wait, but they seem happy, so I suppose it is not my business.” 

Dasha saluted her with a glass of wine. “I do not have children, but I do have students, and I will say--they never do what you tell them to.” 

“This is the curse of a parent--or a coach,” Tanya shot back. She reached out and touched Dasha’s hand, just for a moment, but it sent a spark through her. 

For the rest of the dinner, they both kept their hands on the table, almost touching, but not quite, as they recounted the events of years that had not gone the way they had hoped, but which they could nevertheless not regret. 

By the time their reminiscences ran dry, they were well-fed and far more comfortable than they had started. “You know,” Tatiana said, “it was my daughter who encouraged me to come here.”

“Oh?” Dasha asked, feigning nonchalance. She wondered what Tatiana’s children knew, but didn’t know how to ask. It wasn’t clear if it would be better or worse to be kept a secret. After all, hadn’t she held this love quiet and close to her heart for years? 

Tatiana made a noise of assent. “After you messaged me, I looked up your students. Dan follows all the sports, when I went to their house to mind the baby one day, I found myself watching figure skating. When Yulia found me, I explained that I had reconnected with an old friend from Russia, and that her students were competing.” Her smile was so soft, and Dasha felt a warmth spread over the thought that Tanya had watched  _ her  _ skaters. 

Tatiana gave a rueful little chuckle. “As it turns out, I am not as sneaky as I thought. Yulia looked at me and asked if it was  _ just  _ a friend from Russia. I was so shocked that I did not know what to say. And then my Yulichka said, ‘Mama, this is not Russia. If you love this woman, you should see her.’ I don’t know how she knew. And maybe it is that she has spent her whole life in America, but she did not question it. For her, it was simple: if I loved a woman, then it was as good of love as any other.” She shrugged. “And somehow that made it seem simple for me, too. So I booked a trip.” 

Dasha’s throat felt dry. She cleared it, feeling foolish. “I have never stopped thinking of you, Tanya.”

Tanya smiled. “Never, not in forty years.”

And then--again, Dasha wasn’t sure who had started it, but did it matter, as long as they ended up in the right place in the middle--they had joined hands. 

It was terrifying and liberating and wonderful to be able to do so, to hold hands openly over a table, in a restaurant, in the middle of everything, where anyone could see. What a heady relief. 

“Thank you for coming,” she murmured, squeezing Tanya’s fingers. 

Tatiana squeezed back. 

After that, they had returned to easier topics, both cognizant of the fact that any more emotion would perhaps be too much for one night. They chatted about everything and nothing, spinning their conversation out until Tatiana started to stifle yawns and Dasha realized that she would be exhausted the next morning if she didn’t get to bed soon. 

And so they parted. They didn’t kiss, didn’t show physical affection more than those soft squeezes of each others’ hands. But after forty years of waiting, Dasha didn’t feel rushed. Tatiana was here for a whole week. They lived in the same country. There was time. 

She knew, with a bolstering certainty, that they would get there. 

Now, however, she was  _ absolutely  _ rushed. With a glance and a curse at the clock, she threw on her coat. There was a time for sentiment, and there was a time for training, and if Justin beat her to the rink, God only knew that that saucy, bratty student she loved so much would never let her hear the end of it. 

***

Serena couldn’t get herself out of bed. She had never been a great early riser--that had always been Kat--but she had always managed to at least roll out, hit the floor at something that was more of a crouch than really standing, and shuffle out for breakfast. But today she just couldn’t do it. 

It had been a long week building to this. She just couldn’t. 

All week, everyone at the rink had been gossiping, about her mom, about Mitch, about Dr. Parker. Depending on who you asked, they had either had an affair--some said her mom and Parker, some said Parker and Mitch--that had ended badly and that Carol had snapped--”She’s always been... _ off _ ,” they whispered, in that voice of someone who is delighted to be sharing dirt but who is pretending they don’t  _ want _ to but very simply have no choice--and cutting side-eyed glances at Serena. “That poor girl,” she had heard the mom of one of the juniors mutter. “You really have to give her credit, with a mother and sister like that.”

The “like that” haunted Serena, for a million reasons that she couldn’t pull together. She was pretty sure that the rink gossips didn’t know about Carol and Kat’s bipolar, but they weren’t so blind as to not notice that they were occasionally erratic. As frequently as she raged against them for the troubles that their illness brought, she had felt an even sharper bolt of anger at the thought of someone else slinging it back in their faces. They were  _ her  _ family, and everybody else could shut the fuck up. 

She stared at the ceiling and worried that this  _ total fucking inability  _ to get herself out of bed meant that she was “like that,” too. Maybe these were genetic chickens coming home to roost. Kat had been a teenager when it had started to affect her, after all. Every time she had that thought, she felt so afraid that she full-body rejected it. It had been, after all, an exceptionally hard week. Like, disastrously hard. It wasn’t unthinkable that this was just a fair reaction to that level of stress. But, then again, maybe that was what Kat had thought, at the beginning. 

She wished she could talk to Kat. She wanted to call her, but she had been such an  _ asshole  _ to her the last time they’d spoken that she didn’t know how to take it back, not even with all her experience fighting and making up with her sister. 

It was just too much. It was all too much. Even skating felt miserable. 

Carol banged on her door. “Serena, did you forget your alarm? Get up, you have practice!”

It took all of her reserve, but she forced herself out of bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a note: I am *far* from being a doctor, but I am not trying to diagnose Serena with bipolar disorder in this chapter. rather, I though of it more that Serena, who has dealt with a lot through watching her mother and sister go through their own struggles with their mental illness, and who recently has been MAJORLY gaslit by Parker, might be feeling that she can't trust her own reactions/emotions, and that the fear that that means that she is undergoing a first experience with bipolar disorder (which often emerges in teenage years) would be weighing on her and adding to her stress. in my mind, this is the start of a journey for Serena that is part just regular growing up and part moving forward from the (frankly traumatic!) stuff she has been experiencing. just wanted to assure folks that I am not trying to do an armchair diagnosis--I do not have the credentials for that--but that it seemed to me that it would be something on Serena's mind.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Serena was entering the locker room one Thursday morning when she came face to face with her sister. “Kat!” she said, surprised more than anything, which was stupid, because Kat was here every morning. “Hey.”

Kat looked cautious. “Hey.”

They were blocking each other’s way, which Serena supposed was as close to kismet as she was likely to come; hadn’t she been trying to convince herself to talk to her sister? “Uh, how’s it going?”

Someone less versed in Kat’s expressions that Serena might have thought that Kat didn’t react to this question. But Serena saw the little twitch that was a softening of her reserve. She gave a shy smile and watched Kat soften one iota more. 

“Fine. How are things with, uh, mom?” Kat was hesitant.

Serena let her smile broaden. She knew her sister, knew that being open to her would draw her in. “She’s...okay, I guess? Sad about the whole Mitch thing, I think. She won’t talk about it.”

Kat nodded briskly.

Serena took this as encouragement. “Sorry, Kat. About...you know.”

This time, Kat’s nod was more hesitant. “Yeah, sure. Yeah, I know.”

There were many things  _ not  _ to be said about constantly fighting with your sister. In general, it was unpleasant, stressful, and often meant alienating the person most equipped to understand where you came from. But that understanding cut both ways, and it meant that their apologies, from dint of practice, were pretty streamlined. “I shouldn’t blame you for mom’s stuff. I was being a dick.”

“ You had a weird week. And it’s not like there isn’t plenty of my own stuff to blame me for.” Finally the corner of Kat’s mouth quirked up in the shadow of a smile. “You were a dick, though.” 

Serena gave a little laugh that was only a tiny bit forced. Making up with Kat was good--it was  _ good _ \--but it also required a certain energy that had been harder and harder to muster these days. And she still had a whole practice ahead of her where she had to play happy, cheerful Serena. She only had so much of that to give to Kat this morning. 

So instead of saying all the things she half-wanted, half-dreaded saying to her sister ( _ I just feel so stupid am I not worth it why did he pretend to love me and why did I believe it am I like you and mom skating feels like dying sometimes _ ), she stepped aside to let Kat out of the locker room. “I’ll let you get to practice. But maybe we can...do something sometime this week?”

“Sure. I’m working some days, but we’ll find time.” Then, with a gentle brush against Serena’s shoulder, Kat was gone. Kat transformed as she walked away, Serena noted, taking on that steel spine and centered determination that had always characterized on-ice Kat. Serena envied her that. Serena wasn’t stupid, she knew Kat dealt with plenty of emotional turmoil and drama, but to have something that consumed you so totally that it shut out everything else, even for a little while? Serena would have killed for something like that.

She put on her skates and changed into her leotard almost entirely out of habit and muscle memory. Maybe she needed to start drinking more coffee. 

When she got to the rink, Kat and Justin were already skating down at the far end, doing some of the moving-in-sync pairs stuff that was obviously important but also looked really boring. Not on her  _ life  _ would she switch to pairs. 

Mitch greeted her with the same false cheer he had been employing ever since he’d broken up with Carol. Just another thing that Serena found exhausting. “Ready for jumps today?” he asked brightly. She didn’t miss the relief that passed over his face when she mustered up a smile and nodded. 

For a brief flash, she hated him for being so obvious about wanting her to be okay. Then she shoved it down; she knew he was doing what he thought was best for her. And for him, probably. But it made her want to scream. 

Serena threw herself into practice. Physical exhaustion was a not-terrible substitution for feeling okay. It meant, at least, that she could sleep.

For a little while, things went okay. She was practicing her triple lutz, and she was landing the vast majority of them. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t okay. 

She would go over this moment a lot in the coming days and weeks, until it wore soft and fuzzy around the edges, until she was remembering more the act of remembering than the actual moment itself.

Serena would come to wonder if she had somehow fated herself into this, if all her complaining about skating had somehow manifested in this. She would blame herself, congratulate herself for finding a loophole, and intermittently stare at the ceiling feeling not one goddamned thing about it all. She would ask how she could have avoided it. She would wonder how it hadn’t happened sooner. 

But in the moment, her thoughts were barely formed at all. She just jumped, her body doing the work. And then there was the terrible certainty that something had gone wrong followed immediately by a sickening crack. 

***

Dasha had been in a great mood for the last few days, and she had been putting her energy, as far as Kat was concerned, into torturing Kat and Justin. She had been drilling them  _ endlessly  _ in fundamentals, making them do laps in sync until Kat was dizzy, instructing them to practice lifts over and over until Kat could feel Justin’s arm’s trembling beneath her. She kept correcting the position of Kat’s  _ fingers _ . 

When Kat complained, Dasha didn’t  _ quite  _ smile, but it was close enough that it actually made Kat a little nervous. “This is what champions do, Katerina,” she insisted placidly. “Practice perfection until it becomes habit. This is what off season is for.” And then she would make them do enough laps that, after the second time, Justin begged her not to complain again. Not that Kat had been planning to complain again; she could barely feel her legs. 

Now, after a few days of this--not that she would ever  _ ever  _ admit that Dasha was right--doing this perfectly had sunk into her bones and become slightly therapeutic. They would skate a lap, then do some lifts, then skate a lap, lifts, repeated so many times she lost count. 

And so, as she skated, she barely needed to think about the movement of her feet, or the placement of her hands. She didn’t have to focus on Justin’s warmth behind her to trust that he would act as he was supposed to. She guessed all of Dasha’s waxing rhapsodic about partnership was true, too--another thing she’d never admit. 

Instead, she thought about her sister. 

There had been a time when Kat had known everything about Serena with the kind of instinctive sense that she had thought was just what sisterhood  _ was _ . Surely every set of sisters felt this way, with the older one looking out and the younger one looking up, each certain in their bones of what the other needed, and positive down to their marrow that they would do whatever it took to protect her. 

Kat wasn’t sure when that had changed, when it had stopped being her and Serena against the world. Was it Kat’s diagnosis, which had lumped her in with Carol in a way Serena couldn’t get past? Was it earlier than that? Was it during the years when skating had been  _ everything  _ to Kat? Was it the years where she had been inseparable from Jenn, and Serena had been the annoying little tagalong? 

Or maybe Kat was right all along, and this was the normal way of sisters. Maybe all the things that were so easy and obvious in childhood just got all fucked up when you got older. Maybe getting pissed and then saying you’re sorry, over and over again was the best that you could do. 

Kat was so focused on thinking about Serena that for a moment she didn’t even entirely process that she was actually watching her sister. 

Serena had been jumping all morning; she was a pleasure to watch, in the half-distracted way that Kat could watch while she skated. If Kat was the artistic skater, Serena was the athletic one. She had the kind of power that would make most skaters green with envy. Kat could only imagine how her sister’s legs must be feeling. She’d had practices like that, and they were a bitch and a half. 

And then, like she’d done a thousand times before, Serena jumped, spun--and crashed to the ice. 

And didn’t get up. 

Kat’s brain conjured several things at once. She saw her sister’s tired, sad expression when they’d talked this morning. She heard the thunk of her own head as it hit the ice. She felt the anguish in Jenn’s scream on that last fall. 

Before she made any decision about what to do one way or another, she was tearing away from Justin and sprinting across the ice towards her sister. 

“Fuck,” she heard Justin mutter behind her, and then he was moving with her, just like he always did, rushing for Serena. 

Kat barely registered the slam of ice against bone and she dropped to her knees next to her sister. Serena’s ankle looked just  _ wrong _ . Mitch was hurrying towards them, slow in his regular shoes. 

Serena was breathing heavily. “Kat?” She sounded dazed. “My leg really hurts.” She was blinking really fast. Justin stopped a few feet behind her, giving Serena space, but standing at the ready. 

“I know.” Kat’s hands fluttered uselessly; she was afraid to touch Serena. “No, no, stay put, don’t get up,” she urged as Serena tried to prop up on one elbow. 

Mitch, too, dropped to the ice beside them, his hands moving confidently, assessingly, but even he hesitated when he got to the lower half of Serena’s left leg. “All right, there Serena, you’re going to be okay.” His voice was low, confident. “We’ve called an ambulance, you’re going to be just fine.” 

“What happened to my leg? What happened?” Serena’s voice was starting to take on a slightly hysterical tinge. 

Kat smoothed her hair. “Shh, we don’t know yet, just be still, you’re gonna be fine, baby.” She barely processed the litany of comfort pouring out of her mouth. She didn’t fight the distance lurking in the back of her brain. If she pushed through it, she was going to freak out, hard. 

The cold of the ice was starting to burn though Kat’s leggings. She ignored it, clutched one of Serena’s hands in both of hers. Her gaze darted between Mitch and Serena, trying to assess whether or not he was telling the truth or just trying to be comforting. Helplessness settled low and ugly in her gut. She had seen so many injuries happen in her years skating--had suffered her own near-fatal fall. She had never felt as completely useless as she did right now. 

“What do we do?” she asked Mitch. 

He let out a slow breath. “Okay, let’s help her get onto her back. Davis,” he jerked his chin at Justin, “can you help us out here?”

Justin came over, steadier on skates than Mitch would be in shoes. Kat reassured herself that he was strong, and capable--more so than she would be right now, what with her shaking hands. There was nobody else she would trust to touch her sister right now. So she just held on to Serena while he and Mitch eased their hands under Serena’s body, helping to straighten her out of the slump she’d fallen into. They were careful of her injured leg, but still, Serena gasped and squeezed Kat’s hand even tighter when it was jostled. Both men winced. 

Once Serena was lying flat, the cheek that had been lying on the ice a bright, angry red, it became a project of lifting her. Tears ran down Serena’s cheeks in earnest at this point, but she was distressingly quiet, like her body was rebelling without her consent. Justin gathered her into his arms as smoothly as possible, but the movement still pulled a few whimpers from Serena as the weight of her skate pressed down on her hurt leg. “Sorry, Serena, sorry,” Justin muttered, sounding tense. “I got you, that was the worst of it, I’m sorry.” 

Kat scrambled to her feet. Serena looked at her, eyes wide. “Kat, Kat, don’t leave,” she pleaded. She reached out a hand. 

“I won’t.” Kat was too afraid to try to hold her sister’s hand while Justin skated them towards the edge of the rink, Mitch on his heels. Synchronized skating was one thing, but this was something else entirely. “I’m right here. I’m right here.” 

The superstitious silence--there but for the grace of God go I--echoed through the rink. Skaters, coaches, and parents alike stopped to watch, ostensibly out of respect, but more likely so that they wouldn’t miss a thing. Kat could practically already hear their faux-sympathetic, judgmental gossip. They could make hay out of this for weeks--maybe months, given that it was on the heels of Kat’s big loss and Carol’s arrest.  _ Those Bakers have a tendency to choke _ , they would say.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that. 

Justin and Mitch maneuvered Serena carefully through the rink gate just as the EMTs rushed in. They passed her along to the pair of EMTs, a man and a woman, who turned their attention immediately to Serena’s foot. All the emergency workers in this town were familiar with injuries that came from winter sports; skiing, skating, and hockey were the lifeblood of this town.

Kat’s blade guards were on the other side of the rink, so she unlaced her skates quickly and kicked them off, so she could follow her sister without messing up the blades. Justin wordlessly put out a hand to take them, and Kat hurried after the gurney in her stocking feet. 

“Are you family?” the male EMT asked Kat as they moved. 

“Her sister,” Kat confirmed, as Serena cried, “Let her come, please, let her come with me.” 

“Of course,” the EMT soothed. Kat ignored the snow that soaked instantly through her socks and climbed with Serena into the back of the ambulance. When she was finally able to grab her sister’s hand again, it was clammy. 

The male EMT drove while the woman worked on Serena’s ice skate. When she finally got it off, Kat had to fight not to gasp. The bottom of Serena’s leg looked more like a purple sack than a real foot. Kat didn’t need any medical expertise to understand the  _ wrongness  _ of it. Something in her face must have given her away, because Serena glanced sharply at her. “Does it look bad?”

Kat tried to act more casual than she felt. She shrugged. “Your brains are in your head, so I’ve seen worse.” Her voice shook. 

“Oh my god, Kat, that is  _ not  _ funny.” But she laughed. It was a little hysterical, but it was there. Then she sobered. “Thanks for coming with me.”

And Kat wasn’t sure what to say to that, didn’t have the right words, so she just kissed the back of her sister’s hand as hard as she could, hoping she could force the sentiment right through her skin. 


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am...not a doctor so all medical information in this chapter is !00% made up

Chapter Seven

The screen on Jenn’s phone dimmed, threatening to shut off; she tapped it for a third time in a row, staring at the text. 

**Justin Davis:** hey, I know things are still weird with you and kat, but serena got hurt at practice, her ankle. it seems bad. thought you should know

Jenn had been desperately trying to ignore the situation with Kat, because the last few weeks had been extremely very shitty, but this text seemed like something she couldn’t ignore. 

Jenn had always wanted to like Serena more than she actually did; she always found herself stuck between the disdainful-older-sister attitude that Kat cultivated, but without the obvious intense love Kat hid under her caustic exterior, and the actually-hostile competitor. But this was different--Jenn had been there, or somewhere near wherever it was Serena was now. And there was the knot of guilt, increasingly impossible to put aside, that she had done something really, really shitty to Serena. 

And of course, mostly there was Kat. 

She had picked up her phone to call, to text, something, so many times over the last few days, but always ended up putting it down again, never getting further than hovering over the icon for Kat’s contact. She couldn’t get herself past looking at the last message from Kat--”where are you? this arena is a fucking zoo”--and imaging it replaced with something angry or, worse, silence in response to reaching out. 

When her phone dimmed the fourth time, Jenn let the screen go blank.

***

Dasha had long since learned never to let a gift, even one that rode on the back of a shitty situation, go to waste, and so when Katerina had left to follow her sister, she had embraced the futility of trying to get Justin to complete his workout, waved him off to follow Katerina, and called Tatiana and asked her if she wanted to meet for lunch. 

They had seen each other for a few short times since their first date, and Tanya only had two more days in town before she returned to her family. Dasha didn’t know how to ask what would happen after that. 

Their touching had grown bolder as they re-learned how to flirt; Dasha, who had never been particularly physically affectionate, felt something bloom in her every time Tatiana reached out and touched her hand, or linked their arms together. Hers had not been a life without love, but she had gone for so long without romance that feeling it again rendered her half-drunk. 

They had not yet kissed. Dasha wasn’t sure if this was because they were waiting to figure out the shape of what they were doing together, or because they were drawing out the delicious anticipation, but she felt certain it was coming, and this eclipsed most of the flashes of fear. 

She could feel Tatiana’s gaze on her now as she moved to and from her fridge, setting out an assortment of cold dishes for a casual lunch. 

“I usually do not have time to cook in the mornings, and when practices are over I am ready to eat. I hope you do not mind that things are prepared already.” 

Tatiana made a dismissive gesture with the hand not holding her mug of tea. “You forget I raised two children. I did not have time for two decades. Prepared I do not mind. But--” she raised an arch brow; in the midst of the tragedy of their story, Dasha had somehow managed to forget just how  _ funny  _ Tanya had always been, how quick to laugh and clever with a bone dry wit “--in forty years I have not forgotten your cooking, so still, I am afraid.”

“I was not so bad!” Dasha protested. 

Tatiana shrugged. “You had other talents. Some go to the Olympics, some cook.”

“I was not so bad,” Dasha grumbled again to herself as she turned back to the fridge. And if she looked to see if she had anything that didn’t require much cooking--well, for that she could not be blamed. 

They ate lunch the way Dasha recalled from the rare day off in her Russian youth: laconically, not rushing to be finished, but taking intermittent bites of food from the plates that Dasha had laid out, periodically refilling their mugs of tea from the kettle. Though Dasha had rushed through many midday meals as a young, busy skater, she couldn’t help but think of this style of slow eating as reminding her of home. 

“So your student, she lives here too?” Tatiana asked, glancing around the bright, open first floor. French doors looked out over the resort’s outdoor skating rink, bustling with families as it would be all winter. It was, Dasha concluded, a home she could be proud of. 

“Yes, Katerina, though she is not always here. Sometimes she is with Justin, sometimes she must look after her sister.” 

“Girl with Russian name, poor family, goes with her partner? I cannot imagine why you would want to coach her.” 

Dasha swatted at Tanya’s arm; Tatiana grabbed her hand. “I did not  _ go with  _ Ilya. I married him, that is all.”

Tatiana’s curls bounced as she shook her head. She ran the back of her thumb over Dasha’s hand. Dasha gave a light squeeze. “Poor Ilya. He was a good man. I never know whether to feel jealous of him for having you for so long or thankful for whatever it took for us to still end up here.”

“Yes,” Dasha agreed, because it was both, always both. “He was as good a husband as I could have hoped for, with things as they were.”

The quieted for a moment after that, and though the silence is more contemplative than uncomfortable, it was nevertheless a relief when Yoka prowled out of Katerina’s room and--the utter bastard!--leapt into Tatiana’s lap and immediately started purring loudly. 

“Oh!” Tanya exclaimed. “Who is our sweet koshka?”

“That traitorous shithead is Yoka. He is normally asshole.”

Tatiana burst into peals of surprised laughter. Yoka, in response, started purring louder and making biscuits in her lap. “Your cat--” she gasped, laughing harder “--is named  _ Yoka _ ? That is really the name you give this sweet boy?”

“He is not sweet!” Dasha reached for him and he immediately hissed at her. “You see?” As soon as she pulled back, he resumed purring. When Tanya scratched under his chin, he leaned into her hand. “You little  _ fucker _ , do you forget who feeds you?”

This sent Tatiana into fresh laughter. Yoka was still sitting in her lap, the happiest Dasha had ever seen him, when the sound of a key in the lock sent him skittering back towards Katerina’s room. “Well, fuck you, too,” she heard Justin say a moment before he came into view, clutching two paper grocery bags. “Hey, Dasha, are you h-- oh, hi. Sorry, I didn’t know you had a guest. I just took Kat her phone at the hospital and thought I would bring you some groceries.” He deposited the bags on Dasha’s kitchen counter, and then came around to the table to shake Tatiana’s hand. “Hi, I’m Justin Davis; Dasha’s my skating coach.”

“Tatiana Sergeevna.” Tatiana clasped his hand warmly. 

Justin’s eyes darted over to the old photo by Dasha’s couch, and then back to Tatiana’s face, before breaking into his most charming smile. Dasha rolled her eyes. “ _ Oh _ . It’s very nice to meet you. I’ll get out of the way--”

“Sit down,” Dasha commanded. 

“Can I put the groceries away first?”

First the cat, now this. Dasha wondered what curse compelled her to love such utter shitheads. 

“Yes.” 

He hummed a little tune as he set to putting things away. 

“Does he speak Russian?” Tanya asked her quietly, in Russian.

“A little,” answered Justin with a wink, also in Russian. Dasha sent him a scathing look and he pasted on his most innocent expression and went back to putting things in the fridge. Tanya chuckled. 

“Then I will not bother to hide it. Dashenka, your student is a sweet boy.” Tanya had switched back to English. 

“Thank you,” Justin answered. 

“I am not an invalid!” Dasha protested. She wanted to be mad at them--the cat included--for ganging up on her, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed by their teasing. 

“No,” Justin agreed, “but your doctor did say that it would be good to still restrict your driving for a little while.”

“I will stop telling you what my doctor says if you are going to use it against me, radnoi.”

“No you won't.” Justin put away the last items, folded up the paper bags, and tucked them under the sink, where Dasha kept them. With the familiarity of a thousand visits, he pulled a mug from the cabinet and came towards the table. “I will annoy it out of you. Besides--” he dropped a kiss on her cheek and then dropped himself into a chair “--I like bringing you things.”

“You’re just bored.”

“That, too.”

Tanya looked utterly charmed and Dasha felt a rush of quasi-parental pride. He was a good boy, her Justin, and really seemed recently-- _ finally _ , she had to admit--to be growing up a little. She hadn’t expected that Katerina would be so good for him off the ice, but something about them together had softened the frantic edge that had been hidden for so long under the facade of nonchalance and charm. Even now, sitting in her kitchen, his practiced casual slouch seemed a touch more authentic; yes, he was still playing the role of the carefree ne’er-do-well, but now with the sense that he was doing it for fun, not out of desperation to keep his emotions at bay. 

He was going to grow into a man Dasha would be proud to have known, to have had a hand in. Still, though, she schooled her expression into seriousness, lest her face betray her sentimental thoughts--it never hurt, with Justin, to keep a firm hand. 

“How is Katerina?” she asked. 

Justin blew out a heavy breath. “It’s Kat, so she keeps saying she’s fine, but she looks like she’s ready to kill someone. Serena’s in surgery.” Dasha inhaled sharply. Surgery wasn’t a good sign. “That’s Kat’s sister,” he told Tatiana. “I asked Kat if she wanted me to stay, but I guess her mom was on the way, so she told me to go.” He turned back to Tatiana. “Kat’s mom is...difficult.”

“Horrid cow,” Dasha clarified. Justin gave a noncommittal shrug that suggested that he agreed, but didn’t want to say so directly. “I do not envy Serena her mom’s reaction.”

“I would’ve tried to get Kat to leave, too, but she wasn’t going to leave Serena.” He took a sip of his tea. “I’ll call her in a bit, see if anything has changed.” 

“Kat--” the nickname sounded like it tasted foreign in Tatiana’s mouth; this was the same reason Dasha never shortened her student’s name “--is your skating partner but also…” She glanced at Dasha, like she was worried she was getting it wrong. “Your girlfriend?”

Justin’s smile was easy, natural, and somehow that much more appealing than his structured charm offensive look. “Yeah, yeah, she’s great. Incredible skater, too. You should have seen what it took to get her to agree to skate with me.”

“Katerina is stubborn,” Dasha added. Justin’s grin twitched at this, like he was enjoying a private joke. Dasha caught herself looking at him fondly, and then caught Tanya watching her watch him. It was all she could do not to blush. 

They conversed politely for a few minutes, with Tanya asking Justin questions about his family, resulting in the showing of some pictures of his baby sister. Tanya cooed appropriately and even Dasha, who had never been much fussed about babies, had to admit that this one was cute, although she was infinitely more amused by her student’s affection for the tiny girl. Tatiana was comparing some behavior of Mira’s to her own grandchild when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. 

“You expecting someone?” Justin asked, rising automatically to go answer. 

“No. Perhaps Katerina forgot her key?”

Justin shook his head. “I brought her her whole bag, so she should have it…” He trailed off as he crossed to the door, disappearing from Dasha’s line of sight. “Oh, uh, hey,” she heard him say. 

A few seconds later, Jenn limped into view, still moving heavily on her crutches. Dasha gave her head a tiny shake. Never before she started coaching Katerina did she have so many young people showing up at her door. 

“Hey, I need your help with--oh shit, you’re Tatiana.” Jenn came to a stop when she saw the two of them seated at the table, Justin just a few steps behind her. “Oh damn, this is not a good time.”

“Not really. Jenn helped me find you on the computer,” Dasha explained to Tanya’s quizzical look. 

“Ah, the author of the mysterious first message.”

“Yeah,” Jenn said. “And I am, like, very psyched for Dasha that you’re here--and for you, too--but I need some urgent advice on how to ruin a man’s life.”

***

Kat and Mitch, sitting in the hospital waiting room while Serena was in surgery, had run out of things to talk about after about three and a half minutes. Justin’s visit had been something of a reprieve--for Kat, at least; Mitch had continued to stare at his spot of the wall slightly above and to the left of Kat’s head--but after Kat had let him go--Justin had never spent much time with Carol, a situation she intended to maintain as long as possible--they had returned to uncomfortable silence and gratitude that the doctor had said the surgery would be short. 

And, indeed, they had both lept to their feet and sighed in relief in a rare moment of solidarity when the doctor informed them that the surgery had been successful, that Serena was recovering well, and that she would be ready for a visitor. 

“You go first, of course,” Mitch said, very nearly stifling his dejected sigh. Kat gave a decisive nod, but Mitch had already focused his gaze back on the blank wall spot. 

Whatever. Worrying about her weird relationship with Serena’s coach-slash-her mom’s ex-boyfriend was so far down Kat’s priority list that it barely even registered. 

“Hey, sweet girl,” she said, entering Serena’s room. Her sister looked tired, a little dopey, but not like she was in any great pain; her ankle was wrapped in bandages, nearly to the knee, and propped up on a cushion-cum-medical device. “How you feeling?”

“Mm okay,” Serena mumbled. “They gave me the good drugs.” She gave her head a little bop, setting her curls bouncing. “Sit with me, Kit Kat.” 

Kat’s mouth twitched into a smile. Serena hadn’t called her that since she was little. The good drugs, indeed. 

“I don’t want to jostle your leg there,” Kat said, sitting in the hard, industrial chair. She pulled it as close to the bed as she could, though, and took one of Serena’s hands in hers. “How’s this, though?

“‘S good,” Serena said. Then she giggled at nothing.

It occurred to Kat, as she sat there, that this was maybe the happiest she had seen her sister in a while. The thought was worrying. She had known that Serena was upset over the whole business with Dr. Parker--that fucking predatory  _ fucker _ , she thought with the flash of rage that always rose in her when she thought about him--but she hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten that, drugs or no, breaking her ankle was Serena’s idea of a good day. She stroked the back of Serena’s hand absentmindedly with her thumb. Just one more way that she was totally helpless. 

For a while they sat, Serena intermittently dozing, when their quiet was broken by Carol rushing through the door, dragging with her a doctor and a cacophony of noise. Serena startled awake, and Kat spotted Mitch hovering a few feet behind, a conciliatory look on his face. 

“Serena!” Carol exclaimed, rushing to her daughter’s beside, then snatching her hands back before she could come in contact with Serena’s wrapped ankle. “How did this happen?”

“Carol,” Mitch interjected while Serena gave a processing blink. “I told you, it was an accident. She fell on a jump.” 

Carol shot a venomous look over her shoulder; Kat only just caught the flash of hurt behind the anger. She turned back to Serena. “What did you do? Did you not pay attention? Did you not fasten your skates wrong? I can’t believe you let this happen, Serena.”

“Mom!” Kat exclaimed, jolting to her feet and grabbing Carol’s arm. Carol shook her off. 

“Stop, Kat. Honestly, Serena, how could you be so irresponsible?”

“ _ Mom!”  _ said Kat, more forcefully this time. 

“Ms. Baker,” the doctor interrupted, stepping forward. “Perhaps we should take this time to talk about your daughter’s treatment.” His voice brooked no arguments, but also held a soothing quality to it. Kat guessed that this was not his first rodeo with an overwrought family member.

He hadn’t met Carol Baker, though. She turned on him, eyes flashing. “When can she skate again?”

The doctor’s smile had the same no-nonsense quality as his voice. “At this point, it’s better to think about rehabilitation more broadly. It was a serious break, but the surgery went well, and we don’t have any reason to worry that Serena--I hope you don’t mind if I call you Serena, Ms. Baker, youngest Ms. Baker, that is--will have any mobility issues, long-term.” 

Kat felt a rush of relief. She hadn’t quite considered that she should fear that Serena’s ankle might not heal, although, after Jenn--she felt a slight pang--and her fall. 

Predictably, though, this did not seem to reassure Carol. “When will she  _ skate _ ?” she asked, her tone suggesting that this idiot doctor was somehow missing the point. 

The doctor did not react to Carol’s mounting hostility. “Serena, you will need to undergo some intensive physical therapy, and that’s after you heal. I expect you will need about six weeks of intensive recovery, and then you’ll begin your PT in earnest. All told, you’ll probably need about six months to a year before you’re at full recovery.”

This announcement sent the room into chaos. 

As Carol started to shout at the doctor about how a year was absolutely too long and Serena had a career to worry about, and how she demanded a second opinion, and as Mitch tried to simultaneously settle down Carol and get some more information, and as Kat looked stricken, undoubtedly unable to imagine a year without skating, Serena let the idea run through her. 

A year. She could be free from it all for a  _ year. _

She could go to school. She could stay up late, go to parties, eat whatever she wanted. She could meet boys. 

Everyone seemed so upset that she fought to hide her smile. But today? Today was a good day. 


End file.
